Of all the Ether (ETH) locked in the collateralized debt positions (CDPs) of the old MakerDAO system, 27% belongs to a single Ethereum address. Financial technology data firm Digital Assets Data shared these findings with Cointelegraph on Jan. 26. Dai, which was created by MakerDAO, allows users to borrow or generate the stablecoin by staking their cryptocurrency holdings as collateral. Dai was not supported with bank accounts of reserve currencies but rather is generated by putting Ether into a CDP smart contract. In November 2019, the Dai stablecoin reached its 100 million token debt ceiling and introduced multi-collateral Dai (MCD) …

Decentralized apps (DApp) continue to be a major focus point for developers in the crypto space. However, 2019 ended with DApps still far off from reaching their much-touted potential of being the “future of the internet.” DApp projects in 2019 continued to suffer from their usual issues like poor user retention and the difficulties of navigating user interfaces (UI), among others. While some projects boast market capitalizations north of $100 million, they fail to attract more than a handful of daily users. In the early weeks of 2020, some analytics firms dedicated to monitoring the DApp ecosystem have released reports …

Tron has made a name for itself in the crypto asset space and DApp world, although a huge portion of the protocol’s transactions rely on the gambling industry. A hefty 17 of the top 25 most-used Tron DApps fall in the gambling category on DappRadar’s list of most popular Tron protocol-based DApps. Top 25 lists The eight non-gambling Tron-based DApps on the list fall in several other categories, such as High-Risk, Exchanges and a general “games” tag. These non-gambling DApps, however, host significantly less volume than their gambling counterparts, with the exception of two other applications listed as exchanges. In …

The transaction volume going through the EIDOS decentralized application (dApp) has massively skewed the results of the 2019 dApp Market Report, published Jan. 20. The token airdrop dApp on the EOS blockchain, saw almost three times as many transactions in 2019 as all of the other dApps on nine leading platforms combined. Perhaps the most notable aspect about this statistic is that EIDOS did not launch until 1st November 2019. In the two months of 2019 that it was active, EIDOS racked up almost 2.4 billion transactions. For the whole of 2019, the total number of transactions registered on all …

Members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) can now test their blockchain applications within a new testnet, which does not require a full-scale roll-out. In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Jan. 15, EEA revealed its new partnership with blockchain testing and development firm Whiteblock, through which the EEA will leverage Whiteblock Genesis testing platform. The platform will allow users to manage and utilize the EEA TestNet, wherein EEA members will be able to collaborate around building and testing the next generation Ethereum (ETH) enterprise apps. No need to launch a live environment The product relieves businesses from the …

Internet of Things (IoT) software developer It’s Here announced the launch of a blockchain-enabled lock that purportedly prevents porch pirating. According to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Jan. 7, the solution — dubbed IoTLock — is comprised of a software system and mobile decentralized application (DApp) that can turn any keypad-enabled device into blockchain-secured smart devices. The document cites mailboxes, delivery boxes, and safes as examples of devices that can be upgraded with the solution. In the case of mailboxes, by allowing access only to authorized people such as package delivery couriers, the system would reportedly prevent porch …

DappReview published its 2019 insights on the decentralized app (DApp) space in a Jan. 8 report. Just three blockchains accounted for 98.65 percent of total transaction volume, though EOS began to struggle in Q4 2019. Decentralized app aggregator DappReview summarized the main events within the DApp ecosystem in 2019. The value of on-chain transactions amounted to $23 billion, with 1,955 DApps added during the year — bringing the total number to over 4,000. However, the firm notes that in terms of the number of users, the entire space continues to lag significantly behind any single widely used centralized app. The …

Disappointment isn’t always a bad thing. It can be a spur, motivating one to work harder to meet expectations and goals. It is in this spirit that Cointelegraph informally surveyed members of the crypto community about this past year’s unfulfilled industry promises. Here are some of 2019’s biggest disappointments: Adoption missing? Where are the giant blockchain or crypto projects — enterprises that seize the imagination, rivet the public’s attention, and quiet the crypto skeptics? As Nouriel Roubini noted last year, “[Blockchain] still has only one application: cryptocurrencies.” Many in the industry are still waiting. As Lanre Sarumi, CEO of crypto …

After Google removed Ethereum-based decentralized application (DApp) browser MetaMask from its Android application store, Apple may now force Coinbase to remove the DApp browser feature from its crypto wallet application. According to a Reddit post published on Dec. 28, United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase warned its users that in order to comply with Apple’s mobile App Store policy, it might be forced to remove the DApp browser feature from its wallet application. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong commented on the post: “Coinbase CEO here. This is really unfortunate to see. Apple seems to be eliminating usage of Dapps from the App …

Vitalik Buterin has claimed that Ethereum will support 3,000 transactions per second after the upcoming Istanbul fork. Will this unleash a new wave of Ethereum creativity? Might we expect a surge in traffic on the Ethereum network? Could its increase influence the price of ETH? Ethereum is slow The conventional wisdom is that Ethereum is too slow. But for what purpose is it too slow? It seems to be sufficiently fast for financial services. But the mistake people are making in saying “Ethereum is slow” is misunderstanding what a great thing, counterintuitively, it is to be slow. ETH works because …

The centralization of EOS has again emerged as a contentious issue within the cryptocurrency community, with the firm that created the EOSIO software, Block.One, participating in electoral procedures to choose the Block Producers for the EOS blockchain. On Nov. 28, EOS Block Producer EOS New York tweeted screenshots of Whois search results that suggest that six of EOS’s total pool of Block Producers are managed by just a single entity, intensifying criticism of the network’s centralization. EOS’s blockchain is secured using a delegated proof-of-stake model, with 21 Block Producers elected to operate EOS token holders to exclusively operate the network’s …

What are some of the key points to remember about scalability? It is all about centralization vs. decentralization. For blockchain platforms, the scalability of a given chain often boils down to the level of decentralization possessed by the network. Highly decentralized ecosystems (such as Bitcoin) are quite slow, whereas networks that are more centralized (like EOS, with its 21 Block Producers) are much faster. Therefore, having fewer nodes producing blocks generally makes things faster. However, centralization reduces the interesting properties that blockchains innately possess — namely their resistance to censorship, transparency and overall immutability. Are there any noteworthy blockchain-scaling solutions? …