The first two days of Unitize, the virtual conference organized by BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week, have come and gone with speakers from various sectors of the emerging crypto and blockchain space. Developments around central bank digital currencies, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the industry, have taken center stage during the first two days of the event. Crypto and blockchain adoption amid the pandemic The COVID-19 outbreak continues to dominate discourse across the social, political, economic and several other facets of human life. Thus, it was unsurprising to see the novel coronavirus featured in multiple panels …

During yesterday’s Unitize blockchain conference, developer Bruno Škvorc illustrated how a Polkadot-based blockchain can be launched within one hour. When speaking at event on July 7, Škvorc explained in detail how to create a blockchain based on Polkadot’s modular “Substrate” architecture. Furthermore, he illustrated how blockchains built this way can be seamlessly updated without needing to hard fork. Škvorc explained that Substrate-based blockchains can be configured by choosing from many available modules to better suit the needs of who is building them. He also claims that — thanks to being connected to each other — that blockchain’s security is ensured …

Gavin Wood, the co-founder of Ethereum and Parity Technologies, says crypto-economic systems act like “nation-states” of the internet, running on governance as a type of parliamentary democracy. Wood joined the Unitize conference on July 6 to talk about how blockchain governance essentially acts as laws for these nation-states that need to be able to adapt to stay relevant. “We haven’t really thought about how blockchain can be used as a means of actually evolving the rules of the blockchain,” the Ethereum co-founder said. “Decentralization in crypto prevents the corruption of these rules.” Screenshot of Gavin Wood speaking at Unitize on …

In a special announcement made at the Unitize conference on July 6, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Terra revealed a new DeFi savings product called Anchor that aims to offer dependable interest rates on stablecoins deposits. The companies involved in the creation of Anchor plan to launch it across their respective blockchains at the end of Q3 this year and scale across to other PoS blockchains in the future. Do Kwon, founder and CEO of Terra, explained in a prepared statement: “While DeFi staples such as Maker and Compound have been revolutionary in creating fully decentralized crypto money markets, the volatility of …

A partnership announced on Tuesday between the Gitcoin project and Polkadot will help the interoperable blockchain platform’s developers find community support and funding. Gitcoin’s current function can be considered as an experiment in a new way of funding public goods based on the concept of "Capital-constrained Liberal Radicalism," or CLR, championed by Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin. This works through Gitcoin Grants, a hybrid public funding mechanism that relies both on community contributions and wealthy donors. CLR is similar to the concept of matching donations, but they are not backed one-to-one. Instead, a quadratic funding system changes the weight of each …

Polkadot (DOT) launched a stand-alone blockchain today, although the network is not considered the project’s mainnet yet. Polkadot sits under the wing of blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies, and the Web3 Foundation, a type of incubator for decentralized tech. The Polkadot protocol aims to provide compatibility across different blockchains. “There could be more than one chain candidate before it officially transitions to mainnet,” said Peter Mauric, head of public affairs at Parity Technologies. The solution unveiled a testnet of sorts in 2019. Calling the exploratory product “Kusama,” Polkadot did not refer to this as a testnet, but as a “canary …

The Web3 Foundation has pushed back its proposal to redenominate 100x of Polkadot’s (DOT) supply after conducting a community referendum on the Kusama network. While the referendum, dubbed a Polkassembly, largely saw support for the proposal, Web3 noted a “non-negligible amount of opposition, including from some within the ranks of Web3 Foundation and Parity.” Web3 Foundation backs off on DOT redenomination The Web3 Foundation has announced that it “cannot, in good faith, sponsor redenomination” after seeking community feedback on its proposal to increase the supply of DOTs by 100x. The proposal outlined a plan to Plancks, the sub denomination of …

A new blockchain protocol from a company funded by Web 3 Foundation promises to reduce collateral requirements in cross-chain applications. Interlay received a grant from the foundation to build a bridge between Polkadot and Bitcoin (BTC). The latest paper to come out from this project, “Promise: Leveraging Future Gains for Collateral Reduction”, proposes a new protocol . Alice & Bob engage in ongoing relationship The easiest way to explain how Promise works is through an example. Let’s say, Alice engages Bob as a service provider for a series of tasks, and that this relationship is ongoing, where Bob periodically provides …

Interoperability project Interlay has been selected to receive a Web3 Foundation grant to continue its work on Polkadot. The money will be used to develop a parachain on Polkadot that will connect to the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain. According to the March 5 announcement, Interlay is one of the recipients of Web3 Foundation’s fifth wave of grants deliberated in Q1 2020. The Web3 Grants program funds teams and projects working to improve Polkadot in a variety of contexts. Each grant is for a maximum of $100,000 and is tied to the execution of specific proposals, though the foundation does not disclose …

Polkadot is gearing up for its upcoming network launch as it revealed an integration with Chainlink (LINK) on Feb. 25. The integration of Chainlink oracles may be crucial for the development of Polkadot decentralized finance (DeFi) and other advanced smart contracts. Chainlink has completed an initial integration on Kusama, a canary network for Polkadot similar to a testnet. Chainlink was previously available on other blockchains through adapters, but this is the first move outside of the Ethereum (ETH) ecosystem in 2020. Polkadot developers will thus be able to access external data by using Chainlink’s oracles. This is crucial to enable …

Celer Network will develop its layer-2 solutions for Polkadot, an upcoming blockchain network developed by Web3 Foundation and supported by Parity Technologies. The sidechain scaling solution is positioned to improve performance beyond what is possible with layer one scaling. As announced on Feb. 20, Celer Network and the Web3 Foundation have partnered to port Celer’s State Channel Network technology to Polkadot’s development environment. Cointelegraph interviewed Mo Dong, co-founder of Celer Network, to learn more about the planned integration. Layer Two Benefits Celer Network focuses on providing a blockchain-agnostic scaling solution based on layer two scaling. It is part of a …

Blockchain interoperability protocol, Polkadot, launched its experimental “canary network” dubbed Kusama, this morning, Aug. 23. In a blog post, the team announced the first deployment in the wild of its protocol, combining “bleeding-edge technical improvements in governance, consensus and scalability.” Limited functionality for soft launch In order to get off the ground, Kusama was begun as a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) network. All validator nodes are currently being run exclusively by the Web3 foundation. During this initial period much of the functionality is disabled, most notably balance transfers and governance. Functionality will be limited to staking, sessions and claims modules. The period …