Xapo Bank, an international private bank headquartered in Gibraltar, integrates the Lightning Network to improve its Bitcoin (BTC) capabilities. On March 2, Xapo officially announced a partnership with the Lightning Network infrastructure platform Lightspark, which allowed the firm to implement Lightning on its platform. The integration enables faster and cheaper transactions on Xapo, reducing blockchain confirmation waiting times and transaction fees on the original Bitcoin network. According to the firm, Xapo Bank members will now be able to instantly pay for small purchases of up to $100 at any vendor accepting Lightning payments. High-volume transactions are initially not supported with …

Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder and CEO of Solana Labs has downplayed claims that Solana's network outages were being caused by a high volume of validator messages and its on-chain voting system clogging its consensus layer. While the Solana Foundation confirmed in a Feb. 27 post that the “root cause” of the recent 20-hour network outage is still not clear, the CEO responded to speculation that Solana’s decision to include on-chain votes as transactions is a “massive design flaw” that has led to its many outages. The controversial thread in question was posted by Twitter user DBCryptoX earlier on Feb. 27 …

A recently introduced Illinois Senate Bill has been ridiculed by the crypto community over its "unworkable" plans to force blockchain miners and validators to do "impossible things" — such as reversing transactions if ordered to do so by a state court. The Senate Bill was quietly introduced into the Illinois legislature on Feb. 9 by Illinois Senator Robert Peters but appears to have been only recently noticed by Florida-based lawyer Drew Hinkes who discussed the bill in a Twitter post on Feb. 19. The bill titled the “Digital Property Protection and Law Enforcement Act,” would authorize the courts — upon …

The percentage of Ethereum blocks complying with orders set by the United States Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) has now fallen to 47% — the lowest since Oct. 11. The latest milestone in reversing censorship comes nearly three months after the percentage of OFAC-compliant blocks reached its peak at 79% on Nov. 21. OFAC-compliant blocks are those that exclude transactions involving parties sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. A fall in compliant blocks could be seen as a win for those that oppose censorship within the Ethereum ecosystem. In a statement, blockchain consulting firm …

The launch of Bitcoin nonfungible tokens (NFTs) — known as Ordinals — has tipped the number of non-zero Bitcoin addresses to a new all-time high of 44 million, according to crypto analytics platform Glassnode. In a Feb. 13 report from Glassnode, the firm explained that for the first time in Bitcoin’s 14-year history, a portion of network activity is being used for purposes other than peer-to-peer monetary Bitcoin (BTC) transfers: “This is a new and unique moment in Bitcoin history, where an innovation is generating network activity without a classical transfer of coin volume for monetary purposes.” Glassnode explained that …

How coinbase transactions are structured Coinbase transactions are structured as the first transaction in a block, where the miner includes a newly minted amount of BTC as a reward for their effort in solving a complex mathematical problem to validate transactions and create a new block on the blockchain. Coinbase transactions have a special format. Compared to a regular transaction input, a coinbase transaction has a different set of values that do not represent unspent transaction output (UTXO). As such, in place of a transaction hash, a coinbase transaction will have 32 bytes, all set to zero. The output index …

Robinhood’s board of directors has approved a plan to buy back the $578 million stake in their company which was bought by former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX co-founder Gary Wang last year. Robinhood confirmed it got board approval to buy back the stake in its fourth quarter report, which was published on Feb. 8. “Our Board authorized us to pursue purchasing most or all of our shares that Emergent Fidelity Technologies bought in May 2022," said Robinhood’s chief financial officer Jason Warnick, adding “The proposed share purchase underscores the confidence the Board of Directors and management team have …

Wallets linked to now-bankrupt Alameda Research became active again on Feb. 7, transferring out millions worth of FTX exchange’s native token, FTX Token (FTT). The Alameda wallet activity post FTX bankruptcy filing has been a big concern for the crypto community, with many questioning the merits of the law enforcement agencies and how these wallets are being accessed. The Alameda address 'brokenfish.eth' transferred nearly $2 million worth of FTT tokens from BentoBox smart contract on Sushiswap. The smart contract in question serves as the central vault for the whole Sushi ecosystem. Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has a history with …

United States-based crypto exchange Coinbase has become the latest crypto wallet provider to roll out transaction previews and blocklists amid a rise in crypto thefts. On Jan. 30, the crypto exchange announced it had integrated a new suite of safety features to its wallet app to make it easier for users to spot and take action on potential foul play from scammers. Such integrations include a transaction preview feature which gives the user an estimation of how users “token and NFT balances will change” during a transaction before the confirm button is hit. The firm has also rolled out token …

On Jan. 30, European cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares published its “Digital Asset Fund Flows Report,” which revealed that digital asset investments experienced a surge in inflows last week, reaching $117 million, the highest since July 2022. CoinShares reported that the sector's total asset under management (AuM) rose to $28 billion, a 43% increase from its November 2022 lows. The improvement in investment product volumes was evident, with $1.3 billion traded during the week, a 17% increase compared to the year-to-date average. Meanwhile, weekly volumes in the digital asset market have risen by an average of 11%. Germany saw the highest …

About two months after the FTX collapse, the Solana network is stronger than ever, according to Austin Federa, the head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation. Federa defines the recent SOL token price crash as a short-term market reaction to the perceived connection between Solana and the defunct crypto exchange FTX. While FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was invested in many Solana-based projects, Federa pointed out he didn't have any influence on the network’s operations and fundamentals. “The external perception was that there was a very close relationship between the Solana network and FTX, which wasn't the case," Federa …

Last year has been a rollercoaster year for crypto: from the collapse of big wallet providers to the unfolding FTX saga, and the all too familiar occurrences of rug pulls, scams and bankruptcies. While the market is still trying to find its footing in the aftermath of what can be categorized as a challenging year, there is a case to be made for this being a net positive for an industry that is still going through substantial growing pains. The scale of malpractice with FTX was so massive that it has drawn worldwide attention. This obviously has its downside for …