On May 30, Tezos implemented the amendment Athens A, as the result of a voting process that involved its baker nodes (the Tezos equivalent of “miners”) from Feb. 28 to May 30. Although the actual relevance of the upgrade was quite small (see below), the Tezos community underlines that the test was a milestone. The smooth shift to Athens A indeed demonstrated the capability of Tezos to evolve without forking, thanks to the features of proposal/selection/voting/test/implementation this blockchain itself encompasses. On the very same day, another fast-growing young company backed by a cryptocurrency, Iota, announced an important step toward total …

Chinese-based blockchain platform Neo has implemented a new iteration of its consensus algorithm, the Byzantine Fault Tolerance mechanism (dBFT 2.0), on its mainnet, according to a press release on June 4. The new algorithm purportedly provides immediate transaction finality. dBFT 2.0 includes a new procedure for reintegrating failed nodes back into the network, and also adds a “commit phase” of consensus, which alleviates forking issues by including a step that forces node assignment to new blocks. The consensus mechanism dBFT reportedly differs from the ones for top cryptocurrency blockchains Bitcoin and Ethereum because of this commit phase. For Bitcoin, the …

Two miners have reportedly executed a 51% attack on the bitcoin cash (BCH) blockchain, according to tweets by Cryptoconomy Podcast host Guy Swann on May 24. A 51% attack occurs when someone controls the majority of mining power on a Proof-of-Work blockchain network. This means that the majority block verifier can prevent other users from mining and reverse transactions. While many have assumed that a 51% attack would be carried out with malicious intent, the above case happened as the two mining pools attempted to prevent an unidentified party from taking some coins that — due to a code update …

Privacy-centric cryptocurrency monero (XMR) plans to switch to a new proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm in October. The new algorithm follows an agreement with Arweave, which will fund an audit of the new algorithm, an Arweave spokesperson told Cointelegraph via email on May 23. Arweave, which has launched a permanent and decentralized internet, said that monero will implement the RandomX algorithm, thus replacing CryptoNight, if the audit is successful. Until now, monero developers reportedly hard-forked the network once every 6 months to ensure application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) resistance by implementing small changes to CryptoNight. However, this approach has been criticized for being …

How does the EOS governance model fit in with the blockchain ethos of decentralization? In the past, the EOS network has been forced to answer to allegations regarding this very question. In October 2018, when the EOS mainnet was only active for five months at that point, Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer released a statement in response to a report that accused the major Block Producers of collusion and mutual voting. In the statement, Blumer pointed to the infancy of the EOS network and made no effort to deny the claims — although also not confirming them. “We are aware of …

Emin Gun Sirer, a professor at Cornell University and a major global blockchain expert, will launch his own cryptocurrency and blockchain network, Bloomberg reported on May 16. Sirer, the creator of the first crypto based on proof-of-work (PoW) — Karma System — is now planning to launch a blockchain network that he touts as running as many transactions per second as payment giant Visa. Having raised $6 million from major investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain and MetaStable in February, Sirer’s Ava Labs has reportedly launched a private test version of the Ava network on May 16, while the public …

Retail behemoth Amazon has received a patent for generating Merkle trees as a solution to the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm, a document confirmed on May 14. Amazon, which has taken an increasing interest in blockchain technology in recent times, now appears to be targeting development of a specific variation of the instrument. Specifically, the patent targets Merkle trees — a data verification tool — to constitute the work required in a PoW setup. PoW is the algorithm used in bitcoin (BTC) and some other major cryptocurrencies such as litecoin (LTC), dogecoin (DOGE) and monero (XMR). “This document describes techniques for using …

The Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 proof-of-stake (PoS) transition will not take place until 2021, the CEO of crypto analytics firm Messari predicted at a panel of ConsenSys’ Ethereal Summit on May 10. During the panel titled “The Smart Contract War Is Coming,” Messari’s Ryan Selkis pointed out major risks associated with Ethereum’s migration from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a PoS consensus algorithm, arguing that PoS systems “are not proven to work.” According to Selkis, the currently PoW consensus algorithm of ethereum 1.x, is “probably pretty good, and maybe even good enough.” The expert elaborated that the algorithm is well-established, having proven …

An Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) testnet beacon blockchain is now live. Preston Van Loon, co-founder of sharding development firm Prysmatic Labs, announced the development in a Medium post on May 7. Ethereum 2.0 is an upcoming new Ethereum chain featuring improvements in security, scalability, and decentralization. Ethereum 2.0 would not be introduced to the current Ethereum network by means of a hard fork. Instead, users will be able to transfer value from the current Proof-of-Work (PoW) chain via a one-way smart contract. The announcement also notes that shards are a core concept behind Ethereum 2.0. Shards are individual chains …

A code for the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain’s first-stage transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm could be completed by June 30, as stated in an Ethereum core developers meeting on May 2. In a bi-weekly call, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake claimed that the developers team expects to prepare code specifications for phase zero by the end of June. Drake stated: “We’re still very much on track. Still, [code] simplifications are coming through, which is great and the process of fine combing is also for finding these final bugs.” Phase zero is the name of the first phase transition stage of …

Ethereum (ETH) core developer Hudson Jameson announced that a third-party audit of the Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC)-resistant proof-of-work algorithm ProgPoW has been funded. The dev made the announcement during the latest bi-weekly Ethereum core developer meeting held on April 26. During the call, it was specified that the targeted funding amount of 50,000 units of decentralized, Ethereum-based USD-pegged stablecoin DAI had been reached. The funds were reportedly crowd-sourced through donations. Jameson noted that the audit is set to begin “this week or next week hopefully.” ASIC refers to mining hardware that uses single-purpose chips, which are tailored to more …

On April 9, Reuters reported that a Chinese government agency is considering the elimination of crypto mining in the country. Given that China has been hosting the majority of mining pools on its soil, the global crypto industry might be poised to take a massive hit. However, the plan is not written in stone at this point, and part of community has dismissed it as casual FUD. Brief introduction to China’s relationship with crypto Chinese authorities have been spearheading the “blockchain before Bitcoin” approach since September 2017, when the infamous crackdown on local initial coin offerings (ICOs) and crypto exchanges …