Crypto && Coffee 008
- 3 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- Pieter Wuille has opened up Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) 340,341 and 342 for acceptance on the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo. These three BIPs describe the consensus rules and basic wallet operations for the Taproot proposal. This work also has a Work in Progress (WIP) pull request (PR) referencing the BIPs.
- Matt Corallo on the Bitcoin Core dev mailing list started a discussion regarding what attributes are desirable in a soft fork activation method and submitted a proposal for a mechanism that contains those attributes.
Ethereum:
- Ethereum released Geth v1.9.10 (Rojo Loco). This update bumps the propagated transaction limit to 64KB. This will further increase after EIP-2464 is approved. In addition to the transaction limit increase, this upgrade also contains updates to node discovery via DNS-based discovery.
Other Chains:
- Lightning Network has issued a pre-release of the next major version of LND, lnd v0.9.0-beta-rc1. Some features include: upfront shutdown commitment which will limit on-chain footprints, KeySend which allows a node to send funds directly to another node without the need for an invoice to be paid, and more.
- The Electric Coin Company, who is behind Zcash, released both an Android and iOS SDK the prodives mainnet support for shielded wallets.
- Ethereum based, Status Network, introduced Assemble Beta on January 16th, 2020. Assemble is a community, owned peer-to-peer crowdfunding tool aimed at supporting web3 projects.
- Aragon Project and ChainSafe published the specifications for Aragon Chain. Aragon Chain will be built by implementing existing Aragon smart contracts and associated components on Ethermint. The project will also include a bridge between Ethereum and Aragon Chain.
- As of January 17th, 2020, KyberNetwork is up 12X in daily trading volume since April 2019 with roughly $3.8M USD volume and 2,873 trades. Full detail of network monitoring here.
- Privacy-preserving MimbleWimble based blockchain, Grin had its first birthday on January 17, 2020. Fun posts here.
- A Tendermint p2p crawling utility and API was published allowing one to capture geo-location info and node metadata such as: network name, node version, RPC info, and node ID. Tendermint is the practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) middleware behind Cosmos and Binance Chain.
Mainstream Recap:
- Anchorage is launching a brokerage for its institutional clients, supporting risk and data solutions via its acquisition of Merkle Data. Full post here.
- The US Department of Defense will give a report to Congress on how blockchain tech might enhance the work of the military. Read the full National Defense Authorization Act here.
- Jay Graber, ex-engineer at Zcash and now peer-to-peer privacy tech evangelist, posted a rundown of all decentralized social networks ranging from Steemit, DTube, Memo, Twetch, Peepeth and Zbay.
- Gemini launched Nakamoto, Ltd., a captive insurance company licensed by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) to insure Gemini Custody.
- J. Christopher Giancarlo, dubbed the “Crypto Dad”, who stepped down as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) last year has launched non-profit Digital Dollar Foundation to study converting the dollar into a blockchain-based digital asset. The Digital Dollar Project is a partnership between Accenture and the Digital Dollar Foundation.
- Binanace has launched the BinanceUS iOS and Android apps which will allow users to unlock 24/7 bitcoin trading and access to 25+ cryptocurrencies.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are jumping over to South Africa for a cup from the world-renowned Truth Coffee Roasting in Cape Town, South Africa. Their Deep, Dark & Twisted is an approachable espresso with low acidity. Brewing this coffee for a rich and deep flat white would be the way to go!
Related Posts
