ConsenSys founder and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin has implied that Ether (ETH) is transitioning to “ultrasound money” status ahead of the London hard fork slated to activate around 12:30 pm UTC on Thursday. During an interview with Bloomberg TV, Lubin was questioned on the imminent Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 upgrade, which will see Ethereum transition away from a bidding-based fee market to a fixed price and burn mechanism. Lubin stated that the London hard fork is part of a broader global movement, in which the first step is the “democratization of the Earth,” and the second step is the …

Ethereum advocates are bubbling with anticipation over the upcoming London hard fork, which is scheduled to take place at block height 12,965,000 on Thursday. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of Ether (ETH) rallied from a low at $2,450 in the early hours on Wednesday to an intraday high at $2,772 for an 8.2% gain on the day. One of the most common occurrences in the crypto market is a large price run-up ahead of a major news announcement or protocol upgrade, which is subsequently followed by a price dump, as those who got in …

Band Protocol, the cross-chain data oracle provider, announced Tuesday that its BandChain oracle blockchain is in the process of upgrading to Phase Two. According to a press release provided to Cointelegraph, the upgrade — which was first proposed back in June 2021 — will be the first data oracle network to allow providers to supply data to the decentralized economy in this manner. The project hopes to allow access to more data sources and richer data types for traditional enterprises by simplifying access to decentralized apps, or DApps. The upgrade also seeks to allow institutional data providers partnered with Band …

The Ethereum network will undergo a major upgrade on Aug. 4, as the long-awaited London hard fork is expected to launch at block 12,965,000. The transition is part of a roadmap leading to the Ethereum 2.0 release, which aims to migrate the network to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. By no longer depending on the intense energy-consumption mining, the main goal is to drastically increase the network's capacity by using parallel processing, also known as sharding. The upcoming London upgrade will implement the critical Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-1559, making Ether (ETH) gas costs more predictable. This controversial change includes a transaction …

The Taproot upgrade has achieved the first significant milestone on the road to activation as 90% of the Bitcoin (BTC) mining hash rate signaled for the protocol improvement within the current difficulty epoch. Data from Taproot.watch, a webpage created by Bitcoin developer Hampus Sjöberg, shows the lock-in stage is now completed. All recognized mining pools signaled for the upgrade with Slush Pool being the first to do so. It is perhaps fitting that Slush Pool also mined block 687285 that sealed the Taproot lock-in. TAPROOT LOCKED IN AT BLOCK 687285 BY SLUSHPOOL pic.twitter.com/FFDdibtmGt — pourteaux (@pourteaux) June 12, 2021 AntPool …

Disclaimer: This article has been updated to reflect that BTC.Top has begun signaling for Taproot activation. The top-10 Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools by hash rate distribution are now signaling for Taproot activation with BTC.Top being the latest among them as of the time of writing. Indeed, 90% of Bitcoin’s hash rate briefly signaled for the protocol upgrade with the figure now standing at about 73%. Tweeting on Monday, crypto exchange giant Binance announced that Binance Pool had begun signaling for Taproot. According to the Taproot Signal Twitter bot, Binance Pool’s maiden Taproot signal occurred at block height 683,878. Based on …

The road to the Taproot upgrade finally coming in 2021 is already underway, with major Bitcoin (BTC) mining pools already signaling support. According to data from Taproot.watch, a webpage created by Bitcoin developer Hampus Sjöberg, Taproot signaling now accounts for about 44% of the total Bitcoin hashing power as of the time of writing. AntPool and F2Pool — the two largest Bitcoin mining pools by hash rate — are among the earliest supporters of the Taproot activation in the mining arena. Other pools in support are Foundry USA and Slush Pool, with the latter responsible for mining the first signaling …

The token of smart contract platform Fantom, FTM, was subject to a 52% price increase leading into Thursday morning following the successful implementation of a new network upgrade. Dubbed “Go-Opera,” the latest upgrade to Fantom introduces a range of technical changes that, according to a recent explainer by the Fantom Foundation, makes the network faster, more efficient and more reliable. The upgrade was announced as completed at 5:42 a.m. (UTC+1) on Thursday. It was two hours later before the FTM coin price peaked amid a surge that left it 52% more valuable than the day before. The coin price climbed …

Mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency continues to reach new highs in 2021 thanks to the growth of popular sectors like decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The explosive growth seen over the past year would not have been possible without the Ethereum network, which saw the price of Ether (ETH) break out to a new all-time high on April 27 following the successful launch of the "Berlin" upgrade on April 15. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that the price of Ether has rallied 27% over the past five days from a low of $2,107 on April 25 to …

Dash Core Group, the entity responsible for developing the privacy-focused coin DASH, publicized fresh changes to the asset's proof-of-stake network on Sept. 30. "Dash Core v0.16.0.1 binaries are released and ready for deployment on mainnet by node operators," said an announcement on Medium from Pasta, one of Dash Core Group's Developers. "This is a major release and is a mandatory upgrade for all miners and masternodes." The network update improves the DASH ecosystem in a number of ways, including methods for confirming appropriate masternode holder software, wallet user interface enhancements and better anonymity capabilities when using PrivateSend — the project's …

Russian blockchain firm Waves has announced updates to its enterprise platform, including accelerated smart contract execution, licensing fees and inter-chain anchoring. On March 17, Waves wrote that the new Version 1.2 of Waves Enterprise will enable an increase in containerized smart contract execution speeds by up to 70 times. The company has sped up execution times by replacing the platform’s former REST communication protocol with Google’s Remote Procedure Call (gRPC) — which containerizes contract execution by removing guest operating systems from the protocol. The speed-up in contract execution will facilitate scaling so that clients can process billions of transactions each …

The Cardano (ADA) network will perform a scheduled upgrade on Feb. 20 to introduce Ouroboros BFT, an improved consensus mechanism. The update is an intermediate step between the current Byron era and Shelley, which will introduce staking on mainnet. Announced by IOHK on Feb. 19, the upgrade will be executed on Thursday at 9:44 PM UTC, or 4:44 PM EST. The network will undergo a hard fork, though the team emphasizes that “it is a planned and managed protocol upgrade.” What is Ouroboros BFT? The new protocol is a development over the original Ouroboros “Classic,” which is currently active on …