A blockchain application platform has announced that its testnet migration is taking place on July 1. Lisk says its testnet is an invaluable tool — enabling upgrades to be put through their paces in a public setting before they are released into production on the mainnet. The migration is due to occur on block height 14,075,259. However, the exact time will hinge upon conditions on the testnet, and whether new blocks are being reliably created. Once completed, all protocol improvements introduced through versions three, four and five of the Lisk software development kit will be functional on the testnet, too. …

On Monday, developers of the Ethereum Classic blockchain announced a hard fork to implement the project’s latest version, now scheduled for launch in late July. The upgrade, which the community has dubbed “Magneto,” will include the four Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIP) first seen in Ethereum’s Berlin upgrade earlier this year. These proposals are meant to improve the network’s security while saving on gas costs by storing addresses and keys in one place for users to access with a single transaction. Beta testing on Ethereum Classic’s Morder and Kotti testnets began on June 2 and June 9, respectively. The Magneto fork …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged as a transformational force for not just the cryptocurrency market, but for financial markets in general in 2021 thanks to the ease of access and security offered by blockchain-based protocols which operate on smart contracts. One project that is looking to take the simplicity of DeFi to the next level is Celo (CELO), an open blockchain ecosystem that makes financial tools accessible to anyone with a mobile phone. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of CELO rallied 50% from a low of $4.29 late on May 16 to an intraday …

Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer has reintroduced a bill aimed at preventing the IRS from imposing penalties or fees on crypto taxpayers with forked assets. In an announcement from Emmer on Monday, the congressperson from Minnesota said he had once again introduced the Safe Harbor for Taxpayers with Forked Assets bill in the United States House of Representatives. If passed in its current state, the bill would create a safe harbor for crypto holders with forked assets, allowing them to be nontaxable events. Further, these conditions would be continued until the Internal Revenue Service provides “clear and consistent guidance on how …

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) burst back into the market capitalization top 10 rankings on Thursday after a 36% overnight surge compounded 68% growth for the week. The per coin valuation of BCH climbed from $1,068 to $1,462 in under 24 hours leading into Thursday, adding to a notable increase from its weekly low in the $800 range. The resurgence of what was once a mainstay of the top-10 lineup comes just over a week ahead of Bitcoin Cash’s scheduled bi-annual hard fork on May 15, which will introduce two small, but not insignificant, tweaks to the network. One sees the removal …

Mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency continues to reach new highs in 2021 thanks to the growth of popular sectors like decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The explosive growth seen over the past year would not have been possible without the Ethereum network, which saw the price of Ether (ETH) break out to a new all-time high on April 27 following the successful launch of the "Berlin" upgrade on April 15. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that the price of Ether has rallied 27% over the past five days from a low of $2,107 on April 25 to …

Ether (ETH) has been on a tear recently, with the premier altcoin’s value increasing from $1,800 to the peak of $2,480 since the start of April, showcasing a growth of nearly 30%. This latest wave of monetary momentum comes in the wake of Ethereum being on the receiving end of a lot of criticism regarding rising network congestion and transaction costs. To put things into perspective, since the second half of February, the average cost of facilitating transactions on the Ethereum ecosystem has continued to hover above the $16–$20 range, making it quite impractical for individuals looking to facilitate smaller …

It’s undeniable that Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are currently the two most dominant cryptocurrencies, and as a result, they receive most of the attention from the mainstream media, institutional investors and retail investors, but this doesn't mean that the sector leaders are not occasionally challenged by competitor networks. Two forked projects that once sought to challenge Bitcoin and Ethereum for their seats at the top are Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC). In the past week, both coins have demonstrated that they are still capable of generating excitement and producing big gains. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView …

Led by Bitcoin’s (BTC) ascent to a new all-time high along with much of the wider cryptocurrency market, Ether (ETH) continues to push new all-time highs on Wednesday as the coin’s price flirted with the $2,400 range for the first time. The Ethereum network is scheduled to undergo an update in the next day or so when the blockchain reaches block number 12,244,000. The blockchain was at block number 12,237,070 at time of publication. Based on current average block times of 14 seconds, the update is poised to land on Thursday at around 12:00 pm (UTC+1). The update — dubbed …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a plan on Monday for the first hard fork of the new Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain, tentatively named HF1. The hard fork would allow the developers to introduce several key upgrades to the recently launched Beacon Chain, which would also serve as a useful test for deeper changes in the future. The biggest practical change is the support for light clients — nodes that would have minimal resource requirements and could run on mobile devices. This would allow for “trust-minimized wallets” that are able to verify the blockchain on their own instead of relying on …

IOHK, the development arm behind Cardano, recently announced a new hard fork of the protocol scheduled for mid-December. Kevin Hammond, a software engineer at IOHK, revealed this week that Cardano will undergo a hard fork later this month as part of its transition to the Goguen development era. Although most observers associate hard forks with trauma, Hammond said that these events are handled much differently on Cardano: “[...] Cardano handles hard forks automatically, without stopping block production. This gives a uniquely smooth upgrade process that allows new features to be introduced easily and evolve the platform’s capabilities.” The hard fork …

On Nov. 4, Ethereum (ETH) core developers hit a significant milestone. In a “quick update” on the Ethereum Foundation blog, developer Danny Ryan confirmed the release of the v1.0 specs for the hotly anticipated Ethereum 2.0 upgrade, which includes the mainnet deposit contract address. Anyone who wants to participate as a validator on the Ethereum 2.0 mainnet can now start depositing their minimum stake of 32 ETH. The initial results looked promising, with 14,000 ETH (worth around $5 million) staked in the first eight hours alone. However, the developers have set a minimum total stake of 524,288 ETH from 16,384 …