Kusama, a sister chain to Polkadot’s platform, is ready for the rollout of parachains on the network. Polkadot and Kusama creator Gavin Wood said on Tuesday in a blog post that Polkadot was entering the fourth and final phase of its mainnet launch, which involves deploying parachains to the Kusama network. According to Wood, the development arm behind Polkadot, Parity Technologies, had released an upgrade — Polkadot version 0.9 — for Kusama, which “is now finally ready to host parachains.” Wood said the launch of the parachains would proceed following a full external audit on the new version of Polkadot …

Nonfungible tokens were one of the hottest sectors of the cryptocurrency market from the start of the year until March but as is the nature of the crypto sector, NFTs cooled off significantly in April as the hype died down and high fees on the Ethereum (ETH) network hampered the ability of buyers and sellers to interact with the protocols. The challenge of high fees eventually led some projects like Axie Infinity (AXS) and Smooth Love Potion (SLP) to migrate to other networks or embrace layer 2 solutions as a way to help lower costs. This move, along with a …

As Ethereum gas fees soar and the demand for scalability reaches fever pitch, layer-two scaling solution StarkWare has announced on Wednesday a $75 million Series B funding round led by Paradigm, Three Arrows, Alameda Research, Pantera Capital and Sequoia, among others. The team announced the raise in a tweet: Announcing our $75M Series B, led by @paradigm, with new investors (Three Arrows & @AlamedaResearch), and old ones too (@PanteraCapital, @sequoia, @foundersfund, @DCVC, @Wing_VC). — StarkWare (@StarkWareLtd) March 24, 2021 StarkWare, which previously raised $30 million in 2018, offers zero-knowledge rollup technology allowing for off-chain computation and beefed up transactional throughput, …

Chainlink (LINK) oracles have made their way to xDai, an Ethereum sidechain that has seen growing adoption among DApp developers who cannot afford to stay on the Ethereum mainnet. As announced by Chainlink on Thursday, its price feeds are live on the xDai mainnet, offering price data for an initial set of trading pairs including LINK/USD, AAVE/USD, DOT/USD and SUSHI/USD. More pairs can be quickly added if there is demand, the company said. The integration was completed by Protofire, a development workshop and xDai validator. The team received a Chainlink Community Grant to port native Chainlink oracles on xDai, including …

Blockstream has added six more members to the federation that governs Liquid, the firm's Bitcoin sidechain for inter-exchange settlement network. The six new Liquid Federation members include Bitcoin web wallet Coinos, crypto custodian Komainu, network privacy firm Nym, blockchain development company Vulpem Ventures, broker Watchdog Capital, and Liquid Network settlement platform Sideswap. The #LiquidNetwork Federation grows to a total of 59 with six new members announced today. The six new members are @coinoswallet, Komainu, @nymproject, @side_swap, @vulpemventures, and @WatchdogCapital. https://t.co/QkluG8ivIh pic.twitter.com/CudS30Xyjv — Liquid Network (@Liquid_BTC) January 11, 2021 Liquid was announced at the end of 2015 as a Bitcoin sidechain …

Bitcoin sidechain RSK launched a new bridge protocol called Powpeg, which will facilitate a trustless connection between Bitcoin (BTC) and RSK’s wrapped version of it, called Smart Bitcoin (RBTC). The system marks the first time that a Bitcoin sidechain has featured a trustless peg where the funds allocated to the chain are not controlled by a group of well-defined entities, often called a federation. Powpeg achieves this by combining the security features of a Hardware Security Module, or HSM, with RSK’s consensus layer based on merge-mining with Bitcoin. Sergio Lerner, co-founder of RSK, explained the concept to Cointelegraph: “In the …

The debate is not settled. Despite much of the great work being done, there is no one clear solution for blockchain scaling, and it’s possible there never will be. All of the possibilities explored above stand to help bring digital assets onto a global stage, but none of them are the final say yet. As we have discussed, there are pros and cons for each, and it isn’t implausible that there simply won’t be a single winner. Different projects with unique goals may need to scale in different ways. It is even plausible that more than one of these ideas …

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 …

Most people in the cryptocurrency world are aware that network validation often comes in one of two forms: proof-of-work or proof-of-stake. There are others, but these systems are common and power many of the most popular blockchains. They take the same basic problem — verifying transactions — and solve it in unique ways. However, both offer different solutions to the ongoing debate over scaling. Does one have a true advantage over the other, or are they just different philosophies? We’ll take a look at both. Proof-of-work, explained Most people have heard of Bitcoin (BTC) “miners,” but just what do they …

Japanese blockchain development company Crypto Garage announced it was launching commercial service on its Settlenet platform for the crypto OTC market. According to an update on Digital Garage’s website posted on June 8, its Crypto Garage venture is launching commercial service for Settlenet, a settlement system using Blockstream’s Liquid Sidechain. Specializing in over-the-counter (OTC) transactions of digital assets for trading companies, crypto exchanges, asset managers and brokers, Settlenet has been in development since before January 2019, when Crypto Garage obtained regulatory approval from Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) for a demo version. “In this demo, we went beyond proof of …

Developers are competing to bring ZCash privacy functionality to a Bitcoin sidechain. To do this, they’re using the Drivechain technology created by decentralized prediction market pioneer, Paul Sztorc. As an added incentive, Sztorc has announced a prize fund of up to 6.1 Bitcoin (BTC). This bounty will reduce slightly if not claimed by midnight EST on May 1. Drivechain adds altcoin functionality to BTC Drivechain is an implementation which allows for the creation of Bitcoin sidechains with a true two-way peg. This would allow Bitcoin holders to move their coins to any sidechain they choose. Doing this could allow users …

As the adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) sidechains continues to grow, a major Bitcoin sidechain, the Liquid Network, will soon host a token sale. BTSE, a multi-currency digital asset and derivatives exchange, plans to launch its Liquid Network-powered token sale on March 5, 2020, the exchange tweeted on Feb. 25. According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph, BTSE has recently completed a private sale round featuring high-profile investors like major digital asset manager FBG Capital. Other investors included early stage investment firm Lemniscap, CMS Holdings, Taureon Capital, GBCI Ventures and BCB Blockchain, as BTSE CEO Jonathan Leong noted. First-ever native exchange …