Crypto && Coffee 013
- 4 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- The bitcoin-dev mailing list heated up this week with posts regarding how a Bitcoin transaction can leak protocol usage. Full message here.
- Developers are starting to weigh in on Taproot versus alternatives for enabling a Merklized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) and Schnorr signatures. The debate is also growing around how they will actually activate these Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs).
BitcoinCash:
- Bitcoin ABC v0.21.0 release has been made available three months in advance of the scheduled upgrade activation on May 15th, 2020. The protocol upgrade once activated will enable:
- Increased transaction chain limit from 25 to 50
- OP_REVERSEBYTES opcode support in script
- Improved counting of signature ops using the new SigChecks method
- Support for a miner-activated infrastructure funding plan
Ethereum:
- There is work on a new EIP aiming to add pre-compiles to the EVM for arithmetic operations on the elliptic curve BLS12-381. Support for this curve enables interoperability with ETH2.0, Zcash, Filecoin, Chia, Dfinity, Algorand, and more. This also aids in zk-SNARK applications.
- In the last Ethereum AllCoreDevsCall, they discussed the proposed fork schedule:
- Berlin: includes BLS pre-compile upgrade sometime in June 2020. This will prep for the ETH2.0 Deposit Contract.
- Standalone Prog-PoW upgrade will take place the following third Wednesday after Berlin.
- Creator of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin shares his plan for ETH2.0 from the Stanford Blockchain Conference.
Other Chains:
- Loopring’s DEX Exchange which will be a non-custodial exchange built on top of Ethereum with both the Loopring protocol and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) for scalability, will launch it’s public beta in roughly 2 days.
- Cosmos core contributor Tendermint Inc. announced the restructuring of their company with Directors: Zaki Manian, Jack Zampolin, and Jesse Irwin resigning. Departing engineers are looking to form a new German based company backed by Interchain Foundation.
- On Monday, February 24, 2020 Coinbase Pro launched the KNC/USD and KNC/BTC trading pairs which launches Kyber Network (KNC) onto the Coinbase order books.
- IOTA Foundation releases an in-depth post-mortem of the Trinity wallet attack. The attack took place via code injection into a third-party SDK library which was accessible via the CDN config.
- The XAG/USD Chainlink price feed was incorrect for over 6 hours on February 20, 2020. During that time someone made substantial profits. A total profit of $37K was made on solely three transactions. The Chainlink team responded.
- On February 21, 2020 there was a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) SIM hack that was worth ~$30M.
Mainstream Recap:
- Coinbase announced it has become the first pure-play cryptocurrency company to be approved by Visa as a Visa principal member.
- Ripple’s open developer platform Xpring sponsored three challenges at ETHDenver aiming to add Interledger support for ERC-20, ETH on layer-2 as well as a XRP-ETH bridge over the Interledger protocol. Full details here.
- Shopify joins Libra Association aiming to build a payment network that makes money easier to access and support merchants/consumers everywhere.
- Sweden has begun a pilot program that will be testing an e-Krona. This program will last one year and bring them closer to a potential release of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
- Paxos in conjunction with Credit Suisse and Instinet have claimed the first live blockchain-based settlement of US equities.
- The Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) issues a statement on Friday, February 21, 2020 denying it has ever regulated Binance. People started posting that Binance is primarily based in the Cayman Islands with OKEx based in Seychelles.
- FATF shared the outcomes of their meeting on February 19-21.
- OKEx has added 19 new assets to Spot Margin Trading and Savings Markets. These assets include: ZEC, ATOM, XLM, XMR, and more.
- Representatives from G20 financial institutions pressed countries that have not done so already to align with global cryptocurrency standards as outlined by FATF.
- Bank of England’s Chief Cashier, Sarah John, stated it is crucial central banks research digital currencies. Full report here.
- Binance now supports deposits and withdrawals in Hong Kong dollars.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, we are chillin at Ocean Beach in San Francisco after hitting up Andytown Coffee Roasters. Their Wind & Sea Blend is a favorite to rejuvenate after a surf session. With notes from both Colombian and Ethiopian coffee this is a well rounded, full bodied roast.
Related Posts
