Crypto && Coffee 016
- 4 minsTechnology Recap:
Bitcoin:
- A pull-request (PR) that was originally issued in September of 2019 for Bitcoin Core that aimed at improving the per-opcode verification cost of scripts has been merged into master. This improves the logic for determining whether a particular opcode is to be executed significantly.
BitcoinCash:
- Bitcoin ABC v0.21.2 has been released. This release includes Initial Block Download improvements and removal of the deprecated “accounts” API.
Ethereum:
- Ethereum released Geth v1.9.12 (Tall Moose). This update contains small bug fixes and one breaking change where “eth_call” will not default to one’s first account anymore when executed.
- Ethereum Foundation released an update on ETH2.0.
- With the mass sell off of crypto and Ether in particular, multiple oracle contracts went down. Chainlink, Maker’s V2 Oracle and others were down during prime trading hours. For background, oracles query data from on or off-chain sources. Contracts pulling from on-chain sources had their requests crowded out by other transactions on the network. This led to oracle failures for both Maker and Chainlink.
Other Chains:
- Aragon Network held Vote #6 (ANV-6) on March 11, 2020. In this vote ANT holders aimed at considering AGP-155, a proposal to sunset the current Aragon Governance Process (AGP) in preparation for adopting a new Aragon Agreement for the Aragon Network DAO.
- With the craziness of the crypto market currently, MakerDAO is dealing with roughly $4.5M underwater due to an auction failure. As of March 12, 2020 - the surplus buffer of 500K has been eaten and Maker is considering minting MKR. They moved to hold a vote on March 13, 2020 to adjust parameters to help ensure this doesn’t happen again. Further details below.
- In a pull-request (PR) back in January and February, Bitcoin and Lightning app Zeus enabled “Lurker” mode which allows for the obfuscating and hiding of amounts throughout the app.
- March 13th, 2020 marked the one year anniversary for the launch of Cosmos!
- Cosmos launched IRITA (Inter-Realm Industry Trust Alliance) in partnership with Tendermint and Iris Network - to be the first consortium blockchain product in Cosmos.
- The Maker MKR Debt Auction will now take place on March 19th, 2020. Due to the recent market activity and resulting accumulation of protocol debt, MakerDAO will be issuing a MKR token auction. Full details here.
- Sarang Noether of the Monero Research Lab published new research and development on Triptych. Triptych-2 is an efficient proof for confidential transactions.
- Decentralized networking company, Althea is working on a wireless mesh network where nodes pay crypto micro-transactions upstream for bandwidth. Full post here.
- MakerDAO has added a third asset to it’s decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, USD Coin (USDC).
- Steem community plans hard fork to move from Justin Sun’s Steem to Hive.io. The Hive blockchain launch is currently scheduled for 10am EST on Friday, March 20th, 2020.
Mainstream Recap:
- Cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken announces recommitment to Indian market following Supreme Court ruling. Full details here.
- Binance Futures adds BTC to Cross Collateral.
- Coinbase recently rolled out Bitcoin transaction batching. Instead of their normal single on-chain transaction per customer - they will now be bundling multiple sends into a single transaction. The focus of this is to reduce their load on the network and reduce fees.
- Quedex, a Gibraltar-regulated derivatives exchange, recently launched a new bitcoin-based contract with a 2 year expiration date.
- Casa shares their key system and how to manage their hardware devices during possible network disruption.
- Bakkt raised $300M from its parent firm ICE Markets, as well as Microsoft’s M12, Pantera Capital, and more.
- Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer, Brian Brooks, is leaving the crypto exchange to become the second in command at the U.S.Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Full release here.
- HashiCorp raised $175M at a $51.1B valuation and welcomed Franklin Templeton and T. Rowe Price as new investors.
- Gemini owned Nifty Gateway has officially opened it’s NFT marketplace. Recap on Nifty Gateway can be found here.
- Toyota Motor Corporation and Toyota Financial Services announced the initiative of Toyota Blockchain Lab has moved forward with using blockchain technology.
- Awesome post from Erik Voorhees on Bitcoin and the Coronavirus.
This Week’s Cup of Coffee:
This week, as we are all working from home - go brew a hot cup of Flatlander Signature Blend from Topeka Kansas’ PT’s Coffee Roasting Company. This roast features a bittersweet chocolate aroma with a round body with notes of caramel and citrus.
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