Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano and co-founder of Ethereum blockchain, got into a war of words with Ethereum developers on the implementation of proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus via Merge. On Sunday, Web3 investor Evan Van Ness shared an unpopular opinion claiming that the Ethereum Merge could have been shipped earlier. Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, agreed to Van Ness’s comments and said they should have implemented NXT-like chain-based PoS. Hoskinson joined in the conversation claiming the Ethereum developers should have implemented snow white protocol instead to ensure a faster migration to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. You should have just implemented …

As the Ethereum network’s move to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism drives adoption from institutional investors, the prices for graphics processing units (GPUs), often used for mining cryptocurrencies like Ether (ETH), have gone down in China. Following the historic Ethereum Merge on Sept. 15, the previously highly sought-out Nvidia GeForce GPUs have become significantly cheaper according to a report by the South China Morning Post. Peng, a Chinese merchant, gave the RTX 3080 as an example as the GPU’s price dropped from 8,000 yuan (1118 USD) to 5,000 yuan within 3 months. According to Peng, when Bitcoin (BTC) mining was …

Stanford University researchers have come up with a prototype for “reversible transactions” on Ethereum, arguing it could be a solution to reduce the impact of crypto theft. In a Sept. 25 tweet, Stanford University blockchain researcher Kaili Wang shared a run down of the Ethereum-based reversible token idea, noting that at this stage it is not a finished concept but more of a “proposal to provoke discussion and even better solutions from the blockchain community,” noting: “The major hacks we've seen are undeniably thefts with strong evidence. If there was a way to reverse those thefts under such circumstances, our …

Bitcoin (BTC) headed for its lowest weekly close since 2020 on Sep. 25 as a week of macro turmoil took its toll. Trader prepares for "important week" for BTC Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD trading near $19,000 with hours left to run on the weekly candle. While only down $400 since the week began, the pair offered traders little optimism amid fears that the coming days would continue the bleedout across risk assets. “The whole week traded within the monday range. Weekly close gonna be bearish, looking like a pin bar,” popular trading account Crypto Yoddha …

For years, various blockchain projects were rumored to be future “Ethereum killers,” projects that would unseat Ether from its throne and usurp its title as the top digital asset. That day seems to have come, though it appears it was an inside job. Lido-staked Ethereum (stETH) and other liquid staking derivatives are primed to render Ether (ETH), as an asset, obsolete. The transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoW) allows everyday decentralized finance (DeFi) users to benefit from rewards previously reserved for miners simply by holding stETH or any other ETH liquid-staking derivative. This has given way to a wave …

MEV gain, an Ethereum (ETH) arbitrage trading bot built by MEVbots, which claims to provide stress-free passive income, has been actively draining its users’ funds via a fund-stealing backdoor. Arbitrage bots are programs that automate trading for profits based on historical market information. An investigation of MEVbots’ contract revealed a backdoor that allows the creators to drain Ether from its users' wallets. Our analysis confirms what the @mevbots promotes for the so-called "MEV gain" has a fund-stealing backdoor. Do *NOT* fall prey to it https://t.co/z2eDqMF36b. And thanks @monkwithchaos for the heads-up https://t.co/dhSNGljoH0 pic.twitter.com/HWfCAwbae4 — PeckShield Inc. (@peckshield) September 23, 2022 …

The S&P 500 index has declined about 5% this week while the Nasdaq Composite is down more than 5.5%. Investors fear that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes could cause an economic downturn. The yield curve between the two-year and 10-year Treasury notes, which is watched closely by analysts for predicting a recession, has inverted the most since the year 2000. Among all the mayhem, it is encouraging to see that Bitcoin (BTC) has outperformed both the major indices and has fallen less than 4% in the week. Could this be a sign that Bitcoin’s bottom may be close by? …

Crypto mixer Tornado Cash has returned to the software development platform GitHub after several weeks of being banned on the website. Ethereum developer Preston Van Loon took to Twitter on Thursday to report that GitHub has partly unbanned the Tornado Cash organization and contributors on their platform. The developer suggested that Tornado Cash’s code repositories are now in read-only mode, which means that GitHub is yet to restore full functionality. “But that is progress from an outright ban. I still encourage GitHub to reverse all actions and return the repositories to their former status,” Van Loon stated. According to GitHub …

Cryptocurrencies have been in a bear trend since mid-August after they failed to break above the $1.2 trillion market capitalization resistance. Even with the current bear trend and a brutal 25% correction, it has not been enough to break the 3-month-long ascending trend. The crypto markets' aggregate capitalization declined 7.2% to $920 billion in the 7 days leading to Sept. 21. Investors wanted to play it safe ahead of the Federal Open Markets Committee meeting, which decided to increase the interest rate by 0.75%. By increasing the cost of borrowing cash, the monetary authority aims to curb inflationary pressure while …

In this week's episode of Market Talks, we welcome Yashu Gola, a Mumbai-based financial analyst and technology journalist with a strong focus on bitcoin, smart contracts, exchange assets, NFTs, commodities, and global stocks. Yashu has been covering the cryptocurrency industry since 2014 and does not expect to stop anytime soon. First things first, the Fed has just announced a 75 basis point increase in the interest rates after which the markets took a tumble. Why did this happen and what difference does it make to you and why should you be concerned? We ask Yashu to break it down for …

On the first day after the Merge, the decentralized finance (DeFi) community is settling into the seemingly uneventful transition of the Ethereum network from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS). However, it has yet to be seen the benefits that hard forks will bring to PoW supporters. So far, the most important contending networks in favor of the mining community, EthereumPoW and Ethereum Classic, have shown different outcomes post-Merge. A stumbling start The fledgling EthereumPoW started its debut with Twitter users reporting issues with accessing the network. The issues were confirmed to be the result of a hack to the network …

Fantom (FTM) is known for its speed and inexpensive layer-1 blockchain. Like other blockchains (for example, Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX)) that scale better than their counterpart, it has been dubbed an “Ethereum killer.” After raising $40 million in funds, Fantom launched its mainnet in December 2019. Since then, it has grown to become one of the most popular blockchains, sitting in the top 10 blockchains by total value locked (TVL) with $1.3 billion in TVL. Fantom’s high-throughput blockchain is an open-source smart contract platform. It is scalable and EVM-compatible, meaning you can deploy and run your Ethereum decentralized applications …