Parity Technologies, the company behind Polkadot, is planning to roll out a new parachain that could enhance the use case of the network. “Statemint” is the first proposed common-good parachain for the Polkadot network, Parity Technologies announced Tuesday. A common-good parachain is a parachain that’s granted slots via governance as opposed to the auction mechanism that underlies Polkadot. The auction method doesn’t work effectively for all parachains — i.e., those that could be considered as “common goods.” As a generic asset chain, Statemint would allow anyone to deploy an asset on the network as long as they put up collateral …

After months of planning, the Ethereum community has laid out a timeline for its upcoming Berlin upgrade, marking an important milestone in its development roadmap. Berlin is scheduled to go live on the Ethereum mainnet at block 12,244,000, or April 14, Tim Beiko wrote on Monday. Ropsten, the first testnet to upgrade, is scheduled for March 10. The Goerli and Rinkeby networks are expected to upgrade in one-week increments on March 17 and March 24, respectively. Ethereum node operators are being advised to upgrade to a Berlin-compatible version as soon as possible for the three testnets and before April 7 …

Why wait for one of your investments to release a new feature when you can just build it yourself? Delphi Digital’s newly announced expansion aims to do just that. The cryptocurrency investment, media and research company is now adding a Delphi Labs department that will be focused on contributing to Ventures portfolio company development. 0/ We’re happy to announce the next stage in @Delphi_Digital's evolution: Delphi Labs Our goal with Delphi Labs is simple: to become the leading contributor helping to build out the decentralized futurehttps://t.co/DEmgfPORmQ — Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) February 26, 2021 The move will help expand Delphi’s current …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In Part Four, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discusses some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve. Earlier in this series I outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption; upgradeability, scalability, and governance. In this post I will summarize the solutions we’ve developed to these problems, which we will be showcasing in the upcoming Koinos testnet planned for the second quarter of 2021. …

Bison Trails, a blockchain infrastructure company that was recently acquired by Coinbase, has launched a new Polkadot API that could allow developers to build their applications much faster. Beginning Thursday, Bison Trails customers will be able to leverage Polkadot Indexer, a new protocol that allows users to retrieve and query all types of blockchain data much more efficiently. On a technical level, Polkadot Indexer allows users to pull data with significantly fewer requests to their nodes. Bison Trails claims that for very active accounts, the Indexer can save upward of a thousand requests. In practice, the Indexer is an API …

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has announced the creation of a blind Bitcoin (BTC) development trust worth 500 BTC ($23.7 million), along with rapper Jay-Z, for teams working on the project in India and Africa. Dorsey revealed the creation of the trust on Feb. 12 while sending out a call for three board members to oversee the blind trust initially. JAY-Z/@S_C_ and I are giving 500 BTC to a new endowment named ₿trust to fund #Bitcoin development, initially focused on teams in Africa & India. It‘ll be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, taking zero direction from us. We need …

Devcon, one of the biggest conferences for the Ethereum community and developers, has been delayed again due to uncertainty around the coronavirus pandemic. According to a Tuesday announcement, the Ethereum Foundation decided to hold off on the conference in Bogota instead of going ahead with its previously announced August target. “We want to make sure we do this responsibly and that as many people as possible are able to make the trip from all around the world, which seems unlikely by early August,” the blog post reads. The Devcon team said that it expects to announce a new date for …

Solana has turned its focus towards decentralized finance in Southeast Asia with a new $5 million development fund. The Solana Foundation created the fund in partnership with Vietnam-based investment firm Coin98 Ventures, enabling regional startups building on Solana to receive technical, marketing, and community support, as well as up to $100,000 in funding. The fund will run for the next three years with a specific focus on projects within the DeFi and Web3 spaces, including marketplaces, exchanges, and other DApps or tooling. This is one of the first grants specifying a core region of interest, with a particular focus on …

The number of Bitcoin nodes is at an all-time high, with 11,558 reachable nodes currently active, according to Bitnodes.io. Another Bitcoin network statistics tracker, coin.dance, calculates the total number of Bitcoin nodes at 11,613, which is just above the previous high of 11,250 set one year ago this month. The Bitcoin Core software update 0.21.0 was released for public download on Jan. 14 2021 and is currently the fourth most utilized version of the software among nodes There are currently 619 nodes running this version of the software, which represents about 5.5% of all nodes running some version of Bitcoin …

RIF, the utility token for smart contract network RSK, shot up over 30% in price after an appearance by its founder on the Jan. 13 edition of The Pomp Podcast. The gain equates to a $36 million increase in market cap for RIF, most of which has occurred in the last 12 hours. $RIF up 20% now and it's just the beginning. Building infrastructure on top of #bitcoin The most secure network in the world. — TradingToolCrypto (@RealTradingTool) January 14, 2021 RIF, short for “RSK Infrastructure Framework,” is the token used as payment for decentralized infrastructure services which operate under …

Digital currency exchange Coinbase has awarded its first-ever Bitcoin Core developer grants, and a familiar name is among the recipients. João Barbosa and 0xB10C, the alias of a pseudonymous developer, were selected winners earlier this week. Although the funding amounts weren’t revealed, Coinbase said both developers will “be funded to work on Bitcoin for all of 2021” in amounts payable via BTC or USD. As Coinbase states: Both candidates demonstrated a consistent history of contributing to Bitcoin Core, and provided the Fund’s advisory board [...] with a clear, actionable outline of the projects they intend to work on.” Barbosa’s development …

Martti Malmi, one of the earliest Bitcoin developers and also known as Sirius, has explained what happened to his once massive crypto holdings since 2009. According to a Friday Twitter thread from the former Bitcoin (BTC) developer, Malmi mined roughly 55,000 coins between 2009 and 2010 when the price was almost zero. Malmi said that he ended up liquidating 5,050 BTC for $5 in October 2009, and losing 30,000 BTC through one of the first Bitcoin exchanges he ran when “there was no established exchange rate.” “I was planning to HODL the rest of my BTC, but had to sell …