More than a year ago software developer and member of the Ethereum Foundation, Hudson Jameson, announced plans to launch Metropolis, the third stage on the way to moving the platform to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). All this time, the developers have been keeping secret the date of its final phase, called Constantinople, which is to be held in the form of a hard fork on the network. On September 14, during one of the team’s bi-weekly video calls, it finally became known that the planned hard fork was on track for its mainnet release in November. However, due to “a consensus issue”, …

Ethereum (ETH) core developers have reached a consensus to delay a planned hard fork of the protocol until January 2019, in a meeting Friday, Oct. 19. The fork, dubbed “Constantinople,” was first trialed on Ethereum public testnet Ropsten on Oct. 13, and had been slated to be activated on the main Ethereum blockchain by the end of Oct.-Nov. this year. A testnet is essentially a simulated version of the primary network that allows developers to try out smart contracts or upgrades without having to pay “gas” (computation fees) for their execution. Towards the end of their hour-long meeting yesterday, the …

An alleged “consensus issue” in the testing of a planned hard fork of Ethereum, called Constantinople, has caused a testnet to be “not usable,” according to a tweet from Ethereum blockchain infrastructure firm Infura October 13. Infura’s tweet also advises developers to use other testing networks while the Ethereum developer community is “investigating” the issue. As reported by multiple Ethereum developers the hard fork became active on the Ropsten testnet Oct. 13 at block 4,230,000. However, the testing reportedly caused a “consensus issue on ropsten,” which led Ethereum developer Afri Schoedon to state in a thread of tweets following the …

Bitcoin (BTC) protocol developer Mark Friedenbach introduced a method for Bitcoin scaling he claims will not require a hard fork at a workshop in Tokyo October 5. The new concept presented at the Scaling Bitcoin workshop, entitled “Forward Blocks,” suggests a major on-chain capacity boost by means of a Proof-of-Work (PoW) alternation that is done as a soft fork, combined with use of alternative private ledgers. The proposal describes a method for scaling that claims to be able to increase “settlement transaction volume to 3,584 times current levels” and improve censorship resistance via sharding. During the presentation, Friedenbach suggested major …

Crypto exchange Bittrex is set to delist Bitcoin Gold (BTG), a hard fork of Bitcoin (BTC), by Sept.14, after details of an $18 million hack of the BTG network in May emerged this week. How unexpected was this announcement coming from the exchange, and what are the chances for BTG now that it has found itself in the midst of yet another scandal? “One CPU one vote” ideology: How Bitcoin Gold was created Bitcoin Gold (BTG) is a hard fork of Bitcoin (BTC). It splintered off the original blockchain on Oct. 24 2017, at a block height 491,407. The project …

Crypto exchange Bittrex will delist Bitcoin Gold (BTG), a hard fork of Bitcoin (BTC), by September 14 following an $18 million hack of the BTG network in May, The Next Web reported September 3. Founded in 2017, the hard fork cryptocurrency Bitcoin Gold has suffered a “double-spending” hacking attack that reportedly allowed the unknown hijackers to take control of more than 51 percent of the BTG hashrate. The attack, which reportedly started on May 18, 2018, has managed to amass more than $18 million in Bitcoin Gold from various exchanges, including Bittrex. Following the hack, the Bitcoin Gold team explained …

Controversial and untrusted figure in the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) community Cobra Bitcoin may prove to be the saving grace for the network’s future, after a highly contentious dispute between Bitcoin ABC and nChain threatens to split BCH into competing chains ahead of a scheduled hard fork in November. Cobra, the anonymous owner of Bitcoin.org and previous critic of Bitcoin Cash, announced the Cobra Client hard fork in a Medium post and dubbed the upgrade a “safe implementation of the Bitcoin Cash protocol.” The proposed upgrade is in response to the “mostly non-important and non-urgent changes” proposed by major developers Bitcoin …

On July 31, a Chinese Bitcoin investor sued local crypto exchange OKCoin for allegedly blocking him from getting his Bitcoin Cash (BCH) after the Bitcoin fork. While the case is new for China, compilations regarding hard forks and exchanges have been amassing since perhaps as early as the DAO incident in 2016. So what happens when you have a coin that is about to be split into two, but you’re holding it on an exchange’s hot wallet? What’s a hard fork? Essentially, a hard fork is a change to the cryptocurrency’s protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid — and …

A Chinese Bitcoin (BTC) investor has sued local crypto exchange OKCoin for allegedly preventing him from getting Bitcoin Cash (BCH) after the BTC fork, local news agency Legal Weekly reports July 31. The case is reportedly the first legal action in China that involved last year’s fork of Bitcoin. The investor, known under the pseudonym Feng Bin, filed a lawsuit against OKCoin, accusing the exchange of blocking him from receiving 38.748 BCH that he was due after Bitcoin’s hard fork in August 2017. In the lawsuit, Feng Bin states that he attempted to sell the Bitcoin Cash when the digital …

One year ago to the day, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) came into existence after a hard fork from the Bitcoin blockchain. It has been an interesting 12 months since the fork gave birth to BCH, as proponents have continuously argued the merits between Bitcoin (BTC) and BCH. Nevertheless, on the anniversary of the creation of Bitcoin Cash, it is worth revisiting what caused this altcoin to come into existence and what it aimed to do. How did we get here Since its inception in 2009, Bitcoin’s user base has steadily grown over the better part of a decade. In the past …

Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Verge (XVG) has been the victim of another hack, in which 35 mln XVG were stolen over a period of a few hours, The Next Web reported yesterday, May 22. Verge tweeted that their mining pools were under a DDOS attack on May 21, noting that they were working to resolve it. it appears some mining pools are under ddos attack, and we are experiencing a delay in our blocks, we are working to resolve this. — vergecurrency (@vergecurrency) May 22, 2018 XVG is currently down by a little over 14 percent over a 24 hour period to …

The crypto market is continuing to grow with only slight dips today, April 23, as Bitcoin (BTC) remains close to $9,000 after two weeks of gains and total market cap hits a 7-week high, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Crypto market visualization from coin360.io BTC is currently trading at around $8,840, down around 0.70 percent over a 24 hour period to press time, according to data from Cointelegraph’s BTC price index. Ethereum (ETH) is up around 0.10 percent over a 24 hour period to press time, trading at around $636, according to data from Cointelegraph’s ETH price index. Of the …