Matter Labs has released its plan to help the Ethereum blockchain scale to thousands, or millions, of users. An idea it has been working on for a year now, following a grant from the Ethereum Foundation.

The Ethereum blockchain struggles to handle many transactions right nownowhere near enough to support high volumes of people using the network. Whenever a platform puts any significant load on the Ethereum network, it buckles under the strain. Currently, Ethereum is undergoing a radical shift to a new blockchain that will be more scalablebut its a challenging move, and one that will take several years (although its next step, the Istanbul upgrade, will be reached tomorrow).

In the meantime, Ethereum diehards have latched onto one particular technology that offers a chance to scale in the short term: optimistic rollups. And Matter Labs has dived in and come up with a proposal that, you never know, might just work.

Today, we at Matter Labs are excited to reveal our vision for ZK Sync: a trustless scaling and privacy solution for Ethereum based on ZK Rollup, with an emphasis on superb user and developer experiences, Alex Gluchowski, founder of Matter Labs wrote, in a Medium post. Were also proud to announce the launch of the devnet for ZK Sync.

ZK Sync will be a new way to make Ethereum transactions, but in a way that doesnt bloat the blockchain or cause transaction fees to rise sky-high. At the same time, transaction information, like how much is being transferred, will be kept private.

The idea is to build a second layer solution for Ethereum, which is built on top of the network and can interact with it. It uses optimistic rollups, a technology highlighted as promising by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, to support more transactions and people using the network.

Optimistic rollups build on the notion of sidechains, where work is offloaded to a parallel blockchain. The sidechain is used to batch a bunch of transactions together and upload them as one transaction on the main Ethereum blockchain. It means that each transaction is protected by the security of the main blockchain, but the strain on the network is lifted from it.

Matter Labss platform will also use complex cryptography known as zero-knowledge proofs to make sure that transactions are kept private. Ethereum is a transparent blockchain, so transactions can be seen by anyonebut using this technology keeps the transaction information hidden from view.

Now, many companies in the crypto space are heavily researching and experimenting with such privacy technologythink the Electric Coin Company and its Zcash privacy coinand some have been looking into optimistic rollups too, like Fuel Labs. But whats interesting about Matter Labs new proposal is that they are going to focus on user experience, something that is wholly lacking in crypto technology across the board, and a friction point for achieving the much-touted goal of mass adoption.

Gluchowski explains that the people who stick with crypto through thick and thin are those who believe in its fundamentalsbut to attract millions, or billions, of people, the technology needs to be smooth.

To attract millions of mainstream users, we need to offer them a user experience that doesnt just match these expectations, but exceeds them, he said, adding, Everything must be fast, simple, intuitive and error-tolerant.

But thats easier said than done.

Excerpt from:

Will Matter Labss ambitious new plan save Ethereum? - Decrypt

Accounting giant Ernst & Young has just released open source code that vastly improves privacy and transaction efficiency for Ethereum. The news comes just days before the network undergoes an upgrade that further reduces costs and increases security.

From a technical standpoint Ethereum is constantly strengthening, but that has not been reflected in token prices. There are some huge companies working with the platform and EY is among them. The accounting firm is using the public Ethereum blockchain to reinvent how businesses work together, it aims to bring ETH to enterprises.

In April this year, EY released a small development in Ethereum technology called Nightfall, which was designed for making private Ethereum transactions. According to a recent announcement, Nightfall has been upgraded to enable the first version of transaction batching, allowing up to 20 transactions at once under zero knowledge.

Zero knowledge (zk) is a cryptographic method by which one party can prove to another party that they know a value of something, without revealing any information about what it is they know. Effectively it allows transactions to be verified without revealing the transaction data.

The EY announcement added;

This includes both batching and a new tool for reducing Merkle tree updates called (appropriately) Timber developed by the EY Blockchain research team. We promised <$1 per transaction by the end of 2019, and we nailed it by a wide margin.

Mythos Capital founder Ryan Sean Adams acknowledged the development pointing out that it is highly cost efficient and represents a 400x improvement over their previous implementation.

EYs global blockchain leader Paul Brody has grand plans for a blockchain future based on Ethereum. Earlier this year he stated;

We believe that by 2030, more than half of all new business contracts will be done on a blockchain

The focus is on private smart contracts and that is where Nightfall comes in. The firm aims to create enterprise transactions where clients can be secure in the knowledge that none of their data, even in an encrypted form, will ever go on the blockchain.

The end game is enabling all the functionality of the Ethereum blockchain for enterprise users, with full privacy, Brody added.

When questioned on the developments Adams took a step back to explain the bigger picture.

A new money system is being invented. It operates in parallel to the traditional money system but is global, permissionless, & programmable like the internet. The big investment opportunities are in the reserve assets: BTC & ETH

Ethereum is about to undergo the Istanbul upgrade in less than two days and this will serve as the first step before a huge upgrade to ETH 2.0 can begin.

The progress has not been reflected in token prices yet as ETH is still bearish below $150 at the moment but it is only a matter of time before the winds change for the decentralized world computer.

More here:

Ethereum Gets Another Big Development Boost From Ernst & Young - newsBTC

The Tron CEO Justin Sun announced that TRX is going to be listed on the American arm of Binance (Binance.US) along with almost 20 other digital assets.

Back in early August, Sun stated to the community that getting Trons coin listed on Binance.US and Coinbase had become a top priority for him and that a whole team was going to work on it.

Now, the goal is about to be achieved regarding Binance.US.

Unlike some other cases, when the head of Tron failed to accomplish what he had publicly promised the charity lunch with the global investment guru Warren Buffett which never took place this time Justin Sun has not disappointed the community.

In a tweet today, he stated that TRX is among 18 coins that will be added to the Binance.US trading list soon.

The announcement has been made only recently, so there are no comments in the thread to see the communitys reaction. But Tron fans obviously will be happy.

Today, on its official Twitter page, the Poloniex exchange, whichhas Justin Sun as one of its major investors, announced its intentionto give its users some new opportunitiesto earn. The platform says it is going to start from TRX later in December, apparently, allowing users to earn this major Tron-based coin. Other crypto assets will be added gradually too.

In the comment thread, someTron community membersassumed thatPoloniex wastalking about crypto staking.

As reported by U.Today earlier, recently Poloniex acquired the Tron-based dex TRXMarket and rebranded it as PoloniDEX.

Some believe that Justin Sun is not only one of Poloniex major investors but also one of its decision makers. When Poloniex recently announced Digibyte (DGB) to be delisted overaccusations against the exchange regarding TRX, some accused Justin Sun of initiating that decision.

However, he tweeted in response that the Poloniex team makes all decisions independently. Still, he approves of them, Sun said.

Read more from the original source:

59% of Ethereum Nodes Not Ready for Istanbul Hard Fork - U.Today

For the day ahead

Ethereum would need to move through to $145.90 levels to support a run at the first major resistance level at $147.90.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break out from the morning high $146.29.

Barring a broad-based crypto rebound, resistance at $147 would likely limit any upside on the day.

Failure to move through to $145.90 levels could see Ethereum take another hit.

A fall through the morning low $144.98 would bring the first major support level at $143.49 into play.

Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Ethereum should steer clear of the second major support level at $141.45.

Major Support Level: $143.49

Major Resistance Level: $147.90

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $257

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $367

62% FIB Retracement Level: $543

MATIC tumbled by 49.52% on Tuesday. Following on from a 17.38% slide on Monday, MATIC ended the day at $0.017246.

It was a particularly bearish start to the day. MATIC slid from an early morning intraday high $0.034856 to an early morning intraday low and swing lo $0.011187.

The meltdown saw MATIC slide through the days major support levels before finding support.

A move back through to $0.02 levels by mid-morning was short-lived, however, with MATIC wrapping up the day at sub-$0.02 levels.

Tuesdays sell-off led to the formation of a near-term bearish trend formed at 9th Decembers swing hi $0.042821

At the time of writing, MATIC was up by 2.82% to $0.017733. A mixed start to the day saw MATIC rise from an early morning low $0.016876 to a high $0.018541 before easing back.

Steering clear of the major support and resistance levels, MATIC came up against the 23.6% FIB of $0.0186 before falling back.

Read more here:

EOS, Ethereum and MATIC Daily Tech Analysis 11/12/19 - FX Empire

By Landon Manning

Per an announcement from his lawyer, recently-arrested Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith will be released from prison following a visit to North Korea, though the case against him will be tried in court in the near future.

On November 29, 2019, the U.S. Justice Departmentannouncedthat Griffith had been arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport the previous day, after getting off of a flight from the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, more commonly known as North Korea. As U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman claimed in the announcement, Griffiths brief seminar on blockchain technology to a North Korean audience jeopardized the sanctions that both Congress and the president have enacted to place maximum pressure on North Koreas dangerous regime.

Following the arrest, much of the blockchain community responded in support of Griffith. For instance, Ethereums founder Vitalik Buterin, who is a personal friend of Griffiths, turned to Twitter to publiclyvoicehis support for the developer and circulate a petition demanding his release.

In addition to appealing to the notion that cryptocurrency and blockchain technology foster a worldwide community that transcends borders and international sanctions, Buterinstatedthat Griffiths presentation was based on publicly available info about open-source software, and that there was no weird hackery advanced tutoring involved. Conference attendees fromotherwestern countries have claimed that not only were all attendees expressly forbidden from talking about political issues such as U.S. sanctions, but that several North Korean officials were actually sleeping during the talks.

Geopolitical open-mindedness is a *virtue*, Buterinwrote. It's *admirable* to go to a group of people that one has been trained since childhood to believe is a Maximum Evil Enemy, and hear out what they have to say. The world would be better if more people on all sides did that.

But it shouldnt be too surprising that the U.S. appears wary of the possibilities for crypto assets and distributed ledger technology to disrupt its program of sanctions. U.S.-sanctioned countriesaroundtheworldhave been explicitly experimenting with cryptocurrencies to avoid economic and diplomatic pressure.

Still, this latest announcement is a positive development for Griffith, at least relatively speaking. His lawyer, Brian Klein,announcedon December 2, 2019, that the judge presiding over the case has allowed Griffith to be released until the date of his actual trial, without any mention of a requirement to pay bail. With Klein claiming that Griffith looks forward to his day in court, a successful defense could very well prove a key precedent for the future of the international cryptocurrency community.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

See the original post:

Ethereum Developer to Be Released Following Arrest for Visit to North Korea - Nasdaq

The long-awaited Ethereum Istanbul hard fork is scheduled forSaturday(EST). While considered as part of the move to proof-of-stake, the upgrade focuses primarily on improving sidechain support specifically with Zcash-based technology.

The upgrade is the third and final in Ethereums Metropolis era, the last before the introduction of Casper proof-of-stake. Previous updates, Byzantium and Constantinople, are historic names for the city of Istanbul.

A total of six Ethereum Improvement Proposals will be added out of 30 initial candidates. While no single proposal is particularly comprehensive, the cumulative upgrades should expand the possibilities for smart contract developers to introduce large-scale features to the Ethereum chain, such as privacy protocols and side-chain scaling.

Zero-knowledge cryptographic technology has long been identified as a future addition to the Ethereum protocol, allowing for more private ERC-based tokens and improved scalability through off-chain solutions.

EIP-1108 specifically optimizes routines for elliptic curve arithmetic the core of most cryptographic encryption algorithms. The proposal changes the computational pricing of elliptic curve algorithms, following earlier optimizations in their de-facto resource usage. Gas costs for some computations saw as much as a six-fold decrease. This is because gas prices for all computing operations are set manually by the developers only partially reflecting their true cost.

Ethereum developers identified these changes as crucial for a number of projects building on the platform: AZTEC protocol and ZEther are working to implement zero-knowledge proofs and Confidential Transactions for creating private transactions on the Ethereum chain; Matter Labs and Rollup utilize this cryptography to build side-chain scaling solutions.

The team used the AZTEC protocol as an example of the effective reduction offered by the proposal:

It currently costs 820,000 gas to validate the cryptography in a typical AZTEC confidential transaction. If the gas schedule for the precompiles correctly reflected their load on the Ethereum network, this cost would be 197,000 gas [about $0.23 at current average gas prices].

Another proposal, EIP-152, is set to allow for direct integrations with the Zcash privacy coin. The upgrade introduces advanced versions of the Blake2b hash functions, which are significantly less intensive than the current implementation. This feature will facilitate interoperability with Zcash and other Equihash-based coins. Its main use case is to enable trustless atomic swaps between the Ethereum and Zcash chains, providing a way to tap into the privacy coin without relying on centralized exchange operators.

A more general optimization set to benefit zero knowledge-based systems is EIP-2028, which reduces the gas cost of Calldata a data storage instruction. This will allow for increases to bandwidth of data transmission on-chain (with an acceptable cost of network performance). Prioritizing data storage over raw computation paves the way for off-chain solutions, which take over some of the calculation burden at the price of increased data transfer.

Other improvements include more general security and resource usage optimizations. EIP-1344 introduces a new operation that returns the ID of the current chain. This measure was implemented to maintain the security of the network in the event of contentious blockchain splits. It is especially relevant for layer two solutions such as Plasma, which offload some of the transactions outside of the main chain and only update the changes at specified checkpoints.

During a contentious hard fork, such as the one that created Ethereum Classic, the smart contracts may incorrectly pass the data to the wrong chain an event that could result in loss of funds.

EIP-2200 improves the structure of gas metering for data storage with smart contracts. It introduces several optimizations for batched smart contract calls, as well as organizing previous EIPs on these features.

Finally, EIP-1884 is a general repricing of several functions to bring them in line with their actual resource consumption.

Despite being seemingly minor changes, these last EIPs break backward compatibility thus the need for a hard fork. It should be noted that Istanbul is not a contentious fork, and all nodes and miners are expected to comply with the changes. There will be no new Ether in exchanges.

Link:

Ethereums Istanbul Hard Fork: What Will Change? - Crypto Briefing

Bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, Ripple's XRP, and bitcoin cash, the top five cryptocurrencies by value (excluding stablecoin tether), leaped over the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The bitcoin price climbed from under $7,000 per bitcoin to almost $8,000 in just two days, with ethereum, litecoin, Ripple's XRP, and bitcoin cash all making similar gains (despite some worrying news from elsewhere in Europe).

The reason for the sudden rally was not immediately clear, however, reports that banks in Germany will be able to sell and store bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from next year might be behind the latest uptick.

The bitcoin price has struggled to find stable ground over recent months, with bitcoin, ethereum, ... [+] litecoin, Ripple's XRP, and bitcoin cash all bouncing around wildly.

From 2020, German banks can support the sale and custody of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, local business newspaper Handelsblatt reported.

Germany's Federal Council passed the law at the end of last week, with the new regulation expected to come into force on January 1 2020.

Today, German banks are not allowed to sell bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and the bill would overhaul the status quo.

The news was welcomed by the local bitcoin and crypto industry, as well as the banking association BdB, which said the new regulation makes it possible for investors to invest in crypto-values via domestic rather than foreign funds, could help prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, and allow "experienced" credit institutions to protect investors.

"Germany is well on its way to becoming a crypto-heaven," Sven Hildebrandt, head of the blockchain and crypto consulting firm DLC, told the newspaper in comments translated through Google. "The German legislator is playing a pioneering role in the regulation of crypto-truths."

Bitcoin's epic 2017 bull run, which saw the bitcoin price surge from under $1,000 per bitcoin at the beginning of the year to almost $20,000 in under 12 months, was largely due to expectations the traditional financial industry was about to wade into crypto.

When banks and financial institutions failed to buy into bitcoin as much as some had hoped the price fell sharply throughout 2018.

Over the last year, institutional money has gradually flowed into bitcoin and cryptocurrency, however, with the price being bolstered this year by interest in bitcoin and crypto from the world's biggest technology companies.

The bitcoin price rallied hard towards the end of last week but has since fallen back somewhat, ... [+] dragging on ethereum, Ripple's XRP, litecoin, and bitcoin cash.

Elsewhere, the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market may have been further boosted by reports Twitter and Square chief executive Jack Dorsey, known to be an advocate of bitcoin, revealed he plans to spend time in Africa next year, where it's thought he will work on some bitcoin-related projects.

Dorsey expects Africa to "define" the future, especially when it comes to bitcoin.

See the rest here:

Is This Why Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, And Ripples XRP Suddenly Rocketed Over Thanksgiving? - Forbes

On Friday, the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced that Ethereum Foundation staff member Virgil Griffith was arrested. He faces charges of conspiracy following a trip to North Korea and a presentation at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference.

In particular, he allegedly provided services to the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK, also known as North Korea) without obtaining approval from the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Asset Control.

According to the complaint, Griffith reached out to the U.S. State Department but his permission was denied due to economic sanctions against North Korea. Griffith traveled to China and then North Korea anyway. The complaint also says that Griffith discussed cryptocurrency technologies to evade sanctions and launder money.

A special agent for the FBI interviewed Griffith back in May 2019. It was a consensual interview and he talked about his presentation titled Blockchain and Peace with the agent. He showed photos of his trip and said he would like to attend the same conference next year.

Griffith discussed his presentation with another individual via a messaging app. Individual-1 asked, in sum and substance, what interest North Koreans had in cryptocurrency. Griffith replied, in sum and substance, probably avoiding sanctions who knows, the complaint says.

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, wrote multiple tweets about Griffiths arrest. I don't think what Virgil did gave DRPK any kind of real help in doing anything bad. He *delivered a presentation based on publicly available info about open-source software*. There was no weird hackery advanced tutoring, he wrote.

He also says that the Ethereum Foundation has nothing to do with Griffiths trip to North Korea. EF paid nothing and offered no assistance; it was Virgil's personal trip that many counseled against, Buterin wrote.

Earlier today, a judge ruled that there is enough evidence to move forward with a trial. Griffith will be released from jail pending trial.

Read the rest here:

Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith accused of helping North Korea evade sanctions - TechCrunch

Ethereum

Ethereum fell by 1.31% on Monday. Following on from a 0.42% decline on Sunday, Ethereum ended the day at $148.97.

Another bearish start to the day saw Ethereum slide from an early morning intraday high $151.65 to a mid-morning intraday low $146.82.

Steering clear of the major resistance levels, Ethereum fell through the first major support level at $147.07.

Finding support in the late morning, Ethereum briefly recovered to $150 levels before sliding back through the first major support level.

Off the back of a late afternoon low $146.91, Ethereum recovered to $149 levels before wrapping up the day at $148 levels.

Whilst closing out the day in the red, a move back through the first major support level was key.

The extended bearish trend, formed at late April 2018s swing hi $828.97, remained firmly intact. A reversal from Junes current year high $364.49 back through the 23.6% FIB of $257 reaffirmed the extended bearish trend.

At the time of writing, Ethereum was down by 0.01% to $148.96. A mixed start to the day saw Ethereum rise to an early morning high $150.0 before falling to a low $148.7.

Ethereum left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Ethereum would need to move back through to $149.2 levels to support a run at the first major resistance level at $151.47.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Ethereum to break out from $150 levels.

Barring a broad-based crypto rally on the day, the first major resistance level and Monday high $151.65 would likely limit any upside.

Failure to move through to $149.20 levels could see Ethereum spend a 4th consecutive day in the red.

A fall through to $148.5 levels would bring the first major support level at $146.64 into play before any recovery.

Barring a crypto meltdown, however, Ethereum should steer clear of sub-$145 levels on the day.

Major Support Level: $146.64

Major Resistance Level: $151.47

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $257

38.2% FIB Retracement Level: $367

62% FIB Retracement Level: $543

Stellars Lumen slid by 2.64% on Monday. Reversing a 0.84% gain from Sunday, Stellars Lumen ended the day at $0.056228.

Tracking the broader market, Stellars Lumen slid from an early morning intraday high $0.05775 to a late morning low $0.056067.

Steering clear of the major resistance levels, Stellars Lumen fell through the first major support level at $0.0564.

Finding support in the late morning, Stellars Lumen recovered to $0.0572 levels before hitting reverse for a 2nd time.

The reversal saw Stellars Lumen slide to a late intraday low $0.05600. Stellars Lumen fell back through the first major support level at $0.05640.

Whilst finding support in the final hour to move back through to $0.05620 levels, Stellars Lumen failed to break back through the first major resistance level.

The extended bearish trend remained firmly intact, reaffirmed by 24th Septembers new swing lo $0.051614. Stellars Lumen continued to fall short of the 23.6% FIB of $0.1310 following a pullback from $0.13 levels in late June.

At the time of writing, Stellars Lumen was down by 0.34% to $0.056036. At the start of the day, Stellars Lumen fell from an end of Monday $0.056228 to an early morning low $0.056036.

Story continues

Stellars Lumen left the major support and resistance levels untested early on.

Stellars Lumen would need to move through to $0.0567 levels to support a run at the first major resistance level at $0.0573.

Support from the broader market would be needed, however, for Stellars Lumen to break through to $0.057 levels.

Barring a broad-based crypto rally, the first major resistance level would likely limit any upside on the day.

In the event of a breakout, the second major resistance level at $0.0584 would likely come into play.

Failure to move through to $0.0567 levels could see Stellars Lumen struggle throughout the day.

A fall back to sub-$0.056 levels would bring the first major support level at $0.0556 into play before any recovery.

Barring an extended sell-off, however, Stellars Lumen should steer clear of sub-$0.055 levels.

The second major support level at $0.0550 would likely limit any downside on the day.

Major Support Level: $0.05560

Major Resistance Level: $0.05730

23.6% FIB Retracement Level: $0.1114

38% FIB Retracement Level: $0.1484

62% FIB Retracement Level: $0.2082

Please let us know what you think in the comments below.

Thanks, Bob

This article was originally posted on FX Empire

Read more from the original source:

Ethereum and Stellars Lumen Daily Tech Analysis 03/12/19 - Yahoo Finance

Ethereum developers have agreed to postpone the difficulty bomb, thus increasing inflation when most coins are trying to reduce it.

The recent debate regarding Ethereums difficulty bomb is finally finished, with a rough consensus being reached. According to developers, the difficulty bomb will see yet another delay.

The details regarding what was said are a bit more difficult to acquire, as the public call between the developers experienced a number of technical issues. However, PegaSys Tim Beiko confirmed that the developers agreed to push the difficulty bomb by another 4 million blocks.

According to estimates, the issue of difficulty bomb will next emerge in about 700 days, meaning in about two years. In other words, the bomb will kick in once again in 2021/2022. On the other hand, the PoS Beacon Chain will go through significantly earlier, likely in spring 2020.

Meanwhile, the inflation will grow by 2,000 ETH per day by the time the fork occurs. At the moment, the number of ETH per day sits at around 11,600, meaning that it is expected to grow back to 13,600, which is about the same number that miners were seeing before the bomb kicked in.

One thing to note is that developers did all of the decision making among themselves, without the participation of Ethereums community. One of the decisions included the proposed name of the fork, Melting Glacier. However, the name was eventually changed to Mountain Glacier.

The new name still holds the same message of melting the ice age, which is what the difficulty bomb is also known as. In other words, the increased difficulty of mining would take more energy, making it less profitable and harmful to the environment.

However, once the PoS algorithm kicks in, it will remove the need for miners, while Ethereum itself would become much more environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, Ethereums founder, Vitalik Buterin, believes that PoS is still far away and that reaching it will likely take years.

Instead, the developers will introduce a hybrid of PoS and PoW, although the two types wont be in direct contact with one another. The issue is undoubtedly very complex, and solving it is far from being a simple matter. Furthermore, the delay of difficulty bomb likely wont have a good impact on the efforts to solve it, either.

For now, the developers agreed to hold an urgent hard fork soon after the new Istanbul update, and the fork will take place in only a few days, on December 7th, on block 9,069,000. This is allegedly going to be the last hard fork that Ethereum 1.0 will ever experience, as it will open the way to Serenity, and eventually, Ethereum 2.0.

However, before the transition to Ethereum 2.0, the network will see a number of changes. This will include the activation of Casper, the alleged switch to PoS, the update to Ethereum virtual machine, as well as the change of cross-contact logic and protocol economics. On top of all that, in June 2020, Ethereums network is expected to get yet another update called Berlin, which will be the next step towards Ethereum 2.0.

What do you think about the developers decision? Let us know your thoughts on the matter down in the comments.

Image via Shutterstock, Twitter @TimBeiko

View original post here:

Ethereum Devs Decide to Increase Inflation, Delay Difficulty Bomb - Bitcoinist

Dapper Labs new experimental title,Cheeze Wizards, has concluded its first tournament with the winner receiving 700.6 Ethereum (ETH), worth roughly $104,000.

According to the announcement, Wizard #4845, owned by B1ackKett1e, rose to the top of the pool of 6,107 Wizards to take home the Big Cheese, the tournaments grand prize.

Unsurprisingly, the TK party, the group with Wizard #4845, had the most Wizard power by the end of the tournament, earning both the Party Prize and the Last Kitty Standing Prize for a total of 87.5 ETH divided among the 53 members.

Notably, the tournaments contract paid $102K worth of the prize money directly to the winners wallet for $0.0038 in fees, showing the potential of blockchain and esports, with quick and inexpensive payouts to tournament winners.

You can visit this link to watch the final duel that decided the tournaments winner.

Disclaimer: This articles author has cryptocurrency holdings that can be tracked here. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investments.

Continue reading here:

First Cheeze Wizards Tournament Winner Takes Home $104K in Ethereum (ETH) - SludgeFeed

Ethereum (ETH) may bring another round of staking enthusiasm if it moves forward to further replace mining in 2020.

Staking coins may come in fashion again, as passive income and slow growth replace previous highly speculative uses. Staking is nothing new in the crypto space, but this time around, there is better infrastructure and more reliable projects.

The 2020 prediction comes from Alex Kruger and takes into account the staking success of Tezos (XTZ) so far.

The Tezos project offers reliable governance in the process of baking, and additionally, the custodial services of Coinbase offer a more reliable source of passive XTZ.

Instead of a vast array of staking coins, as in the past, passive income practice may be attracted to the most liquid altcoins, which manage to keep relatively stable prices.

ETH 2.0, the promised staking mechanism, will extend the culture of storing ETH coins. Currently, passive income for ETH is possible for schemes such as Maker, Compound, as well as exchange-based returns programs offered by Binance.

As ETH remains relatively stable, the coins new utility is as a source of passive income. However, staking also means at least some selling pressure as the rewards are monetized.

For Ethereum, staking may replace the lowered mining awards, as the difficulty time bomb still affects the network. But ETH is not the only coin to test staking. Other projects pivot to offering passive income, including the recently booming Chainlink (LINK).

Currently, Tezos offers one of the greatest passive annual income of 6.21% but combined with some inflation based on the growing supply of XTZ. Cosmos (ATOM) has annualized earnings of 8.52%. There are also coins offering outlandishly high annualized earnings, such as Livepeer at 78.6%. LTP, however, is extremely volatile and has lost 60% of its value since August.

ETH staking still has unclear parameters, ranging from staking a few ETH to thousands of coins. For now, it is uncertain what the rewards would be, but the annualized returns will aim to be relatively low.

Mining Bitcoin (BTC) remains a high-stakes activity with a great barrier to entry. Staking, however, may be a less costly mechanism for wider adoption. The only uncertainty about staking is access to the actual assets, as some of the coins may be considered securities based on offering passive income as a form of a dividend.

What do you think about staking passive income? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images via Shutterstock, Twitter: @krugermacro

Read the original:

Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 Upgrade May Revive Staking in 2020 - Bitcoinist

About a week ago, the South Korean branch of the Upbit exchange had $50 mln in Ethereum (342.000 ETH) stolen from it without any security breach. Some experts believe it was an inside job.

After that, the Whale Alert Twitter account started publishing data that shows the culprits are transferring the stolen Ether in small portions from 1,000 ETH to 10,000 ETH.

On December 3, another 20,000 ETH was moved.

Whale Alert records all transactions on blockchain and posts them on their Twitter page. Since Upbit suffered the theft five days ago, the analytics account reported that around 253,000 ETH has been moved.

In the first portion, the culprits transferred about 200,000 ETH.

Image by Twitter

And over the last twenty-four hours, they moved another 53,000 ETH.

Image by Twitter

Image by Twitter

All together that totals approximately $37.5mln. It has been reported that the hacker tried to send a tiny portion of the stolen Ether to the Huobi exchange to test how it goes.

The head of Binance, CZ, promises to freeze any crypto taken from Upbitin course of the hack, should it be transferred to his exchange.

Earlier this year, there have been a few cases of hackers attacking crypto exchanges that were widely discussed by the community. The first one took place in early 2019 and it was the New Zealand-based Cryptopia exchange.

It lost around $6 mln in Ethereum but users kept funding their wallets despite the teams warnings not to do so. This enabled the hackers to steal crypto three times in a row. Finally, the exchange went into liquidation.

Another case was the crypto trading behemoth Binance. The hacker did not take any money, but he insisted that he stole users KYC data and even posted some on his Twitter page.

However, the Binance chief CZ denied losing the customer data, saying the published screenshots came from the previous loss of KYC info by one of the third parties Binance had worked with.

See the original post here:

Hackers Keep Moving Ethereum They Got on Upbit - $37.5 mln in ETH Transferred - U.Today

Ethereum price is trading in a range after a decent recovery versus the US Dollar and bitcoin. ETH price must settle above the $155 resistance to start a strong rise.

Yesterday, we saw the start of a decent upside correction in Ethereum from the $132 swing low against the US Dollar. ETH price managed to recover above the $140 and $142 resistance levels.

Moreover, the price traded above the $150 level, but it struggled to continue above the $152 and $155 resistance levels. A high was formed near $152 and the price is now trading below the 100 hourly simple moving average.

Recently, there was a downside correction below the $150 level. Besides, the price dipped below the 23.6% Fib retracement level of the recent recovery from the $132 low to $152 high.

However, the $144 support is acting as a short term support. On the downside, there is also a connecting bullish trend line forming with support near $144 on the hourly chart of ETH/USD. If there is a downside break below the $144 support, Ethereum price could test the key $142 support.

Additionally, the 50% Fib retracement level of the recent recovery from the $132 low to $152 high is also near the $142 level. Therefore, a close below the $142 support area might start a fresh decline in the near term.

On the upside, there are many hurdles near $150, $152 and $155. More importantly, there is a new key bearish trend line forming with resistance near $150 on the same chart.

To move into a positive zone and start a solid increase, the price must break the $152 and $155 resistance levels. In the mentioned bullish case, the price is likely to accelerate towards the $165 and $170 levels.

Ethereum Price

Looking at the chart, Ethereum price is trading in a range above the $142 support. In the short term, there could be a downside correction towards the $142 level, but dips likely remain supported.

Hourly MACD The MACD for ETH/USD is currently moving slowly in the bullish zone.

Hourly RSI The RSI for ETH/USD is currently well above the 50 level, with a few positive signs.

Major Support Level $142

Major Resistance Level $155

Original post:

Ethereum (ETH) Wont Go Quietly, Risk of Bounce Grows - newsBTC

Ethereums price was trading below the $150 support area, following the cryptocurrency markets latest dip. At press time, ETH was down by 0.12% over 24 hours and was trading at $148.07, according to CoinMarketCap.

Ethereum 1-hour Chart

The formation of a falling wedge pattern was recorded by Ethereums hourly chart, with the price oscillating between two downsloping trendlines. This was indicative of a potential bullish breakout in the near-term. The 50 moving average was above the 100 moving average after it sustained a bearish crossover on 1 December following the collective market slump. On the upside, the moving averages appeared to be converging and could be heading for a bullish crossover in the future.

Following an upside breakout after the closure of the wedge, Ethereums price might possibly climb near the 50 moving average, i.e., $149. If the positive trend continues and gains necessary momentum, ETH could possibly breach $151. While a trend reversal at this point was not predicted, the coin found support at $145-level.

Contradicting indications

The MACD was still in the bears realm, with the signal line hovering above the leading line. The lines, however, appeared to converge. This might potentially mean a bullish phase for the coin in the future. The RSI was below the 50 median and was headed upwards. This suggested a high sell pressure among ETH investors. However, the upward movement of RSI could indicate a reversal of this trend.

Conclusion

A bullish breakout was projected from the pattern formation found on the chart. However, the indicators and the moving averages could resist the coin and stop it from climbing and breaching significant levels. If the bearish pressure continues, ETH bulls might find itself resisted at $149.

Visit link:

Ethereums price could recover as falling wedge takes hold - AMBCrypto

The next few weeks will likely prove to be pivotal for the price of Ethereum (ETH).

To simplify matters, since Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trending down and could range trade for an extended period of time, well consider the ETH/BTC chart.

A look at the chart shows a potential bottom in the 0.016-0.019 region, which may prove to be the last low for a while if Ethereum can move higher from here. Since September, ETH has been outperforming BTC, but recently failed to break above the resistance level of 0.022. Currently, the trading pair is looking to form a local low, potentially around the psychological support level of 0.020.

If bulls are able to flip this level, there could be more upside ahead and we would be looking at the 0.024-0.025 range as the next immediate resistance level.

While the technicals are looking fairly solid, the fundamentals of the Ethereum ecosystem are looking better than ever. The amount of Ethereum and total capital locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications continues to hit new highs. Additionally, blockchain gaming and NFT collectibles are beginning to take-off with investors beginning to back major projects. Finally, the impending switch to Proof of Stake (PoS) offers further economic incentives for larger participation in the network, adding another potential catalyst.

With that in mind, investors should keep an eye on Ethereum over the next few weeks and the remainder of 2019, as it will likely prove pivotal for the future price action of the largest altcoin.

US investors looking to trade ETH commission-free can earn $25 in free BTC by signing up for the Voyager appthroughthis link(or use code: SLUDGE25).

Disclaimer: This articles author has cryptocurrency holdings that can betracked here. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investments.

Read more:

Technical Analysis: Pivotal Weeks Ahead for the Price of Ethereum (ETH) - SludgeFeed

Ether is the gas and currency of the Ethereum network. As a testament to the growing use of that network, the USD value of ether locked up in Ethereum-powered decentralized finance applications, or DeFi dApps, crossed an all-time high of $700 million on November 29th.

That milestone has many Ethereum proponents guessing: when $1 billion?

To be sure, crossing the $1 billion mark is an arbitrary threshold, but it is a round, psychological point for stakeholders to gauge Ethereums fledgling performance.

Moreover, for the reigning smart contracts platform it represents a watershed moment validation by tangible, even if relatively modest adoption when Ethereum is rising but still very much so insurgent.

With detractors who have said Ethereum would never get this far and more yet who have never heard of the project at all, seeing $1 billion locked in DeFi shows not only that real utility is at work but that its also gaining traction.

The rise toward $1 billion comes after Ethereums biggest DeFi dApps have ascended in 2019.

For example, the biggest DeFi project to date, Maker, saw its governance votes facilitated through MKR tokens take on increased importance this year as Makers Dai stablecoin has become more and more of a darling to the Ethereum community. Notably, the Maker team just achieved its biggest milestone yet in activating Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) earlier this month, a system that, among other things, allows users to draw out Dai loans using collateral beyond just ether.

Another big DeFi riser this year has been Compound, one of Ethereums growing stable of composable money legos that has in short order become the second most popular DeFi crypto lending service behind Maker. As a possible indicator of Compounds future prospects, the dApps builders raised a $25 million Series A war chest in November that they hope to use to bring the projects crypto lending services to mainstream users.

Another new DeFi heavyweight has been Synthetix, which has arrived on the scene much more recently than Maker or Compound. Still, Synthetix has glided into something of a vogue status this year, recently rising into second place (per Total Value Locked in USD) behind Maker on tracker website DeFi Pulse.

Simply put, Synthetix allows users to create Synths, or on-chain synthetic assets that are tied to the value of real world assets like stocks, indices, and beyond. And DeFi projects have their risks and rises and falls, Synthetix, like Maker and Compound, might just be here to stay.

As DeFi is still early, it still has its fair share of disadvantages.

One of those disadvantages might be that DeFi is becoming so important that its biggest dApps could be kingmakers in future Ethereum disputes.

Thats according toLeland Lee and Haseeb Qureshi, who outlined in a think piece earlier this month how Ethereum might have become unforkable as a result of the growing clout of its biggest DeFi dApps.

As such, the authors argued that major DeFi projects would have to pick one chain over the other amid a political Ethereum dispute, meaning the chain that the biggest DeFi projects choose to back will likely be the main Ethereum going forward. As Lee and Qureshi wrote:

If you imagine the movie version of this saga, the minority chain looks like an abandoned metropolis. Towering buildings sitting empty, alarms going off with nobody to respond, smoke billowing in the distance. Theres no one to even bother rebuilding for.

Of course, thats all just a theory for now, but the argument is compelling. Even the prospect of Ethereum being unforkable shows that the specter of the platform is growing.

eToro Risk Warning: 75% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

Read more:

Value of Ether (ETH) Locked in DeFi on Course to Pass $1 Billion Soon - Blockonomi

Ethereum has come under fire this year over scaling issues and longevity of the project. There will always be the detractors which support rival crypto platforms and the phalanxes of Bitcoin maximalists believing that BTC is the only fruit. One prominent VC investor sees no reasons to be concerned with ETH scaling issues.

There is a lot of work going on under the hood on the Ethereum network at the moment. The project has more developers than any other competing platform yet serial detractors continue to bash it. VC investors and former project manager at Coinbase, Linda Xie, is not worried as she recently explained.

The first reason is that all scaling issues are likely to be solved with ETH 2.0. The development work on Serenity is progressing as planned Xie pointed out. The first step to the next iteration of the network will be Phase 0, Beacon Chain implementation.

Version 0.9.2 of the Phase 0 spec was released a few days ago with further tweaks to the system. Testnets such as the one from Prysmatic Labs continue to put Beacon Chain through its paces to ensure a smooth rollout to mainnet later next year. Istanbul must come first though and that hard fork has been scheduled for December 8 or thereabouts.

Phase 1 will be sharding implementation which will follow once Phase 0 has been successfully deployed. This will split the data processing responsibility of the blockchain among many nodes, allowing parallel transaction, storing, and processing of information which eases the load on the Ethereum mainchain and permits scaling.

Phase 2 which is even further down the roadmap includes the introduction of a new Virtual Machine Ethereum-flavored Web Assembly (eWASM). This would allow web standard (W3C) smart contracts written in any language to be executed on Ethereum.

Xie added that there are great teams working on other promising solutions such as Optimistic and ZK Rollups. Optimistic is a promising technology for scaling general-purpose smart contracts on Ethereum in the near term while ZK Rollup is a more sophisticated technology which can be used for token transfers and specialized applications today.

Thirdly the Scalar Capital co-founder added;

Certain use cases can take off that dont require significant scaling e.g. DeFi

DeFi has been touted as the future of decentralized finance and a system that is long overdue in a world where banks are drowning in their own debts. Even with the Ethereum price dump, DeFi markets continue to grow.

With all of Ethereums scaling solutions and a healthy decentralized finance market there really is nothing to be concerned about. Price on the other hand is a little hard to swallow at the moment, but with ETH wallowing around the $150 level and a bright future ahead, it can only go one way in the long term.

Go here to see the original:

VC Investor: 3 Reasons to Not be Concerned With Ethereum Scaling - newsBTC

The community-driven Ethereum Express network has announced the launch of two pilot projects with an audience of over 48,000 users. The Proof-of-Authority algorithm based blockchain will be applied in both projects to ensure higher efficiency and transparency of operations.

The Ethereum Express blockchain has recently undergone successful testing and shown outstanding values exceeding 1,000 transactions per block with network capacity reaching over 200 transactions per second that beat the Ethereum networks 15 TPS hands down. Over 48,000 users from the US, Japan, Brazil and Ukraine are encompassed by the pilot projects with a total net value of around $500 million.

One of the pilot projects is reportedly Mining Express, the worlds fifth largest mining company. Mining Express is seeking scaling of its mining infrastructure in light of increased customer demand as management believes that the EEX project can help increase the efficiency of its operations.

The EEX blockchain team is looking forward to the successful implementation of pilot projects, as that would allow it to highlight the technical characteristics of its solutions and attract the attention of potential business partners from other industry sectors. The endeavor will also allow the Ethereum Express to grant its community the chance of generating passive income through transaction validation on is blockchain.

The Ethereum Express network is also introducing its internal EEX coin as the main means of settlements within the infrastructure and as the main instrument of transactions between the gambling and mining industries the pilot projects are operating in. Among the potential applications for the EEX coin is the role of a global backup currency that would expand into other business environments.

The development team of the Ethereum Express project is confident in the success of its pilot projects, as success will pave the way for the adoption and popularization of EEX as a reliable blockchain partner for a variety of business sectors.

Read the rest here:

Ethereum Express Launches Two Pilot Projects Spanning Over 48,000 Users - The Merkle Hash

The Ethereum (ETH) network is preparing itself for the most radical update in its history - switching from Ethereum 1.0 to Ethereum 2.0. This may occur in 2020 after the last Ethereum 1.0 hard fork.Carl Beekhuizen of the Ethereum Foundation's Research and Development (R&D) Department recently shared some details on the status of the future network.

Sincethe design of Ethereum 2.0 will be quite different from what we have seen with Ethereum 1.0, the migration process will take a significant amount of time. At the moment, developers plan to organize it in three stages.

During Phase 0, or "Beacon Chain", the interaction between validators andthe coordination of shards will be managed. Mr. Beekhuizen added that "the beacon chain is the source of ground truth" for Ethereum 2.0.

During Phase 1, the data will migrate to newly designed components from the existing ETH. Finally, Phase 2will upgrade Ethereum 2.0from a robust database to a fully decentralized computing platform.

Mr.Beekhuizen also mentioned the progress with these stages:

At the time of writing, Phase 0 is nearing launch as developers put the finishing touches on the client software. Meanwhile, the specification for Phase 1 is being completed, and Phase 2 is under active R&D, saidCarl Beekhuizen.

The new ETH will be a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network, where all transactions will be approved by validators. Mr.Beekhuizen says that the design of Ethereum 2.0 will allow a "million" validators to simultaneously act on the network. In order to avoid the system from overloading, all validators will interact with the main network through "committees".

Ethereum 2.0makes the distinction betweennodes and validator clients, and validators will need both in order to perform their duties. Each validator will need to stake exactly 32 ETH to a validator deposit contract.

Therefore, people who wish to stake more ETH will need to run multiple validator instances. The node-client separation allows such users to only run a single beacon node with multiple validators connected to it, thereby reducing computation, memory, and storage requirements.

According to Carl Beekhuizen, the network will be enough reliable to survive World War III, unsophisticated enough to run on a laptop, and fraud-resistant enough to assume that validators will belazy and take bribes.

ETH is currently worth $151.3 USD, so you can become a validator on Ethereum 2.0 network for only $4,842 USD. Does this sound interesting to you? Share your thoughts on Twitter!

Read more:

Staking And Validation Details in Ethereum 2.0 Disclosed - U.Today