A former Steem witness, who is also a prominent member of Korea’s crypto community, spoke to Cointelegraph and shared proof that he received death threats from a Hive user ahead of Steem’s 0.23 hard fork. The former witness, who has requested to remain anonymous, told Cointelegraph that he stepped down shortly before the 0.23 hard fork due to constant threats targeted at him and his family: “I received direct threats from a Hive user based in Korea who said he would come to my house at night if they had the time and put feces on my door. Users also …

Ethereum Classic, the twin sibling of the Ethereum network, performed its scheduled Phoenix hard fork on May 31, which included features from Ethereum’s earlier Istanbul fork. The upgrade means that the two networks share virtually the same protocol, and are thus fully intercompatible. The hard fork was scheduled for block 10,500,839, which was mined at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time on May 31. The fork is the third in a series of recent upgrades aiming to bring Ethereum Classic in line with its more popular sibling. In December, the Agharta fork ported Constantinople features to ETC, while Atlantis was activated earlier …

Changpeng Zhao, or CZ, the chief executive of top crypto exchange Binance, has issued a statement regarding the recent Steem hard fork that sought to freeze 23.6 million STEEM tokens associated with 64 wallet addresses. Binance will support the fork, however, indicating that they will support future forks executed by those affected within the Steem community. Steem fork attracts controversy The latest fork was ostensibly intended to protect against malicious actors in the Steem network, however, critics have accused the project of seeking to punish proponents of the Hive hard fork and detractors of Steemit’s owner as of February, Justin …

Steem has executed a soft fork to restrict the rogue “community321” account from making transfers after the account sent nearly 24 million STEEM to Bittrex in protest of a hard fork that sought to freeze the funds. While Steem has claimed that the hard fork was intended to protect the Steem community against malicious actors, critics claim it was intended to punish supporters of the Hive hard fork by freezing their funds. Steem sanctions community321 An update posted to Steemit on May 22 announced the completion of a soft fork sanctioning community321, stating that “the community no longer has control …

As part of the long-running Steem drama, the Steem (STEEM) network experienced another fork today. Particularly designed to tackle “constant attack from malicious accounts,” the new hard fork doesn’t appear to have been entirely successful. Code named “New Steem” the hard fork 0.23 had two primary aims. The first was to reduce the power down period from 13 weeks to four weeks. The second was to seize 23.6 million in STEEM tokens from Steem accounts and stakeholders associated with the Steem blockchain’s rebel and fork, the Hive blockchain. The latter goal has apparently failed as the seized funds were ‘rescued’ …

The controversy surrounding Justin Sun’s handling of the Steem (STEEM) network continues to grow, with Steem moving to freeze another $5 million in tokens held by dissident Steemit witnesses and stakeholders. Network validators — called ‘witnesses’ — associated with Sun have sanctioned the move to freeze 23.6 million in STEEM tokens, accusing the account holders of posing an existential threat to the Steem network. However, critics claim the hard fork vindictively punishes users who opposed the Tron founder’s takeover and supported the Hive hard fork in March — a community led-fork that froze the founder’s reward Sun acquired alongside Steemit, …

On May 5, Venezuela’s government announced that its controversial oil-backed cryptocurrency, El Petro, would go offline for maintenance until May 10. However, observers have since identified that the official Petro block explorer now lists May 5, 2020, as the date that its genesis block was mined. Other block explorers record Oct.13, 2018, as the date for Petro’s genesis block — suggesting that there is more than one Petro chain currently in existence. Petro suspected of quietly forking After the maintenance was completed, the National Superintendency of Cryptoassets announced it had completed major infrastructure upgrades necessitating that PetroApp users update their …

Privacy-focused altcoin, Beam (BEAM), will soon execute its second hard fork. This fork will upgrade its Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm and activate new network features. According to an April 22 blog post, Beam’s second fork will occur at block 777,777, shifting the network’s PoW algorithm from BeamHash II to BeamHash III. The new PoW algorithm is expected to be a major improvement to the Beam mining network, and will enable fuller GPU card capabilities. Additionally, the firm said that the hard fork is designed to unlock some new features like confidential assets, one-sided payments, and the support of privacy protocol, Lelantus …

Canadian cryptocurrency investor, Salim Satir, has filed a lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchanges, Gatehub and Bitstamp, with the High Court of Justice of England and Wales over $4.9 million in purported losses. The plaintiff claims that the losses resulted from misleading statements on Gatehub’s website purporting to detail its Bitcoin (BTC) to Ripple (XRP) trading function, in addition to the wrongful retention of 872 Bitcoin Cash (BCH) amid the August 2017 Bitcoin fork. Investor accidentally purchases ‘Bitcoin IOUs’ from Gatehub Satir alleges that information provided on Gatehub’s website mislead him as to “the operation and effect of the Bitcoin/Ripple exchange function” …

From its obscure beginnings over a decade ago to its current status as the leading cryptocurrency in the world, Bitcoin’s (BTC) tale on its own can make up for a pretty entertaining movie. With the prevalence of Bitcoin and blockchain-related topics in mainstream media nowadays, it is perhaps not a surprise that more films mention or highlight cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. For instance, Anthony Mackie, the actor who plays “Hawkman” in the Avengers movies, promoted Litecoin (LTC) last year in a video published by Vanity Fair. Meanwhile, in February, another well-known actor, Jim Parsons, narrated a cartoon version of himself …

Seven former top Steem developers have converged to form OpenOrchard, a company seeking to build innovative open-source technologies on top of Hive. Cointelegraph spoke to Andrew Levine, OpenOrchard CEO and former head of communications at Steemit, to find out more about the new project. OpenOrchard emerges after Hive hard fork OpenOrchard has grown out of OpenSeed, a team comprising Andrew Levine, Benjamin Flanagin, and Ron Hamenahem. This group was previously working on a second-layer solution for the network. But following Tron founder Justin Sun’s apparent attempts to execute what has been described as a hostile takeover of the Steem network, …

Tensions between Steem (STEEM) and the Hive (HIVE) community continue to escalate, with Steem executing a soft fork to freeze up to 20 accounts owned by the network’s former witnesses. The frozen accounts hold 17.6 million STEEM, worth approximately $3.2 million and equating to nearly 5% of Steem’s total supply. On April 4, the soft fork was proposed in a Steemit post authored by the new account "softfork2288." In response to the purported “uncertain threat that the leaders and main influencers of [Hive] represented to the Steem Blockchain,” the fork sanctioned roughly “no more than 20 accounts “ that meet …