Coinbase has launched a new asset in which Ether tokens are staked and wrapped through the crypto exchange. In a Wednesday announcement, Coinbase said it will be listing Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (cbETH) on the Ethereum network as an ERC-20 token, allowing customers to use their staked Ether (ETH) while earning rewards on the exchange. According to its website, users can withdraw the tokens to Coinbase, stake them, and then wrap the ETH2 into cbETH, with the new wrapped staked token balance visible on their accounts. The tokens are expected to be available for trading on Aug. 25 “if liquidity …

The Ethereum Foundation has announced it will be increasing the network’s bug bounty payouts fourfold ahead of the blockchain’s transition to Proof-of-Stake. In a Wednesday blog post, the Ethereum Foundation said between Aug. 24 and Sept. 8, all “Merge-related bounties for vulnerabilities” will be quadrupled for white hats testing the network. According to the foundation, identifying “critical bugs” — those that have a high impact or likelihood of a high impact on the blockchain — will be worth up to $1 million. The bounty program also allows submissions for low, medium, and high risk bugs. • Merge Bug Bounty Bonus: …

Bitcoin (BTC) first drew attention to the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, a process that demonstrated users could maintain a secure, decentralized blockchain if only at the expense of large amounts of energy. As history would have it, Bitcoin grew in popularity and faced trouble scaling to accommodate the sheer number of transactions needed. Recognizing the gap in technology, alternatives were developed, the most popular being proof-of-stake (PoS). With staking, holders of a crypto asset could participate in the transaction validation process by locking their funds. Each participant would receive compensation in proportion to the amount staked, eliminating the need for …

iFinex, the company responsible for Bitfinex Derivatives, announced on Aug. 23 the launch of a new service offering available to users before the highly-anticipated Ethereum (ETH) Merge. The exchange now offers Ethereum Chain Split Tokens (CSTs). Tokens available to users represent the two systems involved in the Merge: ETHW (PoW) and ETHS (PoS). Bitfinex released the new trading tokens for users to have the possibility to trade on the potential forking event. The coins will be available through the Bitfinex derivatives platform. Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino said they released these new tokens better to prepare users for all eventual possibilities …

In light of the recent ban on crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash and the subsequent arrest of the Tornado Cash developer, there has been a growing debate around what crypto services providers would choose between decentralization and censorship in form of compliance. The question has become more prominent as Ethereum (ETH) is moving from its current proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mining consensus. With the transition less than a month away, a user pointed out that more than 66% of validators on the Beacon chain (Ethereum PoS chain) will adhere to the United States Department of the Treasury's …

Ethereum (ETH) is all set to transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network by Sept. 15-16 that would see an end to its current proof-of-work (PoW) chain. This event would eliminate PoW mining from the Ethereum ecosystem. The terminal total difficulty has been set to 58750000000000000000000. This means the ethereum PoW network now has a (roughly) fixed number of hashes left to mine.https://t.co/3um744WkxZ predicts the merge will happen around Sep 15, though the exact date depends on hashrate. pic.twitter.com/9YnloTWSi1 — vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) August 12, 2022 In light of such a major upgrade, the PoW proponents, especially miners, have decided to keep …

United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced it will be temporarily suspending certain token deposits and withdrawals when Ethereum’s core developers transition the blockchain to proof-of-stake, or PoS. In a Tuesday blog post, Coinbase product manager Armin Rezaiean-Asel said during the Merge event, the crypto exchange will “briefly pause” deposits and withdrawals of Ether (ETH) and ERC-20 tokens “as a precautionary measure” to handle the migration. The exchange also warned users against scammers offering ETH2 tokens, saying crypto users did not need to take additional action to receive staked ETH prior to the Merge. “Although the Merge is expected to …

Ether (ETH) rejected the $2,000 resistance on Aug. 14, but the solid 82.8% gain since the rising wedge formation started on July 13 certainly seems like a victory for bulls. Undoubtedly, the "ultrasound money" dream gets closer as the network expects the Merge transaction to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus network on Sept. 16. Some critics point out that the transition out of proof-of-work (PoW) mining has been delayed for years and that the Merge itself does not address the scalability issue. The network’s migration to parallel processing (sharding) is expected to happen later in 2023 or early 2024. As for …

An Ethereum (ETH) whale wallet that participated in the Genesis Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and obtained about $150,000 in 2014 was activated again on Aug. 14 after three years of dormancy. The whale address transferred 145,000 ETH to multiple wallets as Ether price surged to a new 3-month high of over $2,000. The transfers were made in a batch of 5,000 ETH per transaction and a few transfers of over 10,000 ETH. The total value of the transferred ETH is over $280 million, and the wallet address currently has a balance of 0.107 ETH. The 145,000 ETH transfer was only …

Developers and communities will be able to deploy their own sovereign, custom-made blockchains at the “click of a button” says Celestia co-founder Ismail Khoffi. Speaking with Cointelegraph at Korean Blockchain Week 2022 last week, Khoffi said that the project’s vision is to decouple the consensus and application execution layers to unlock new possibilities for decentralized app builders. Celesita is basically a stripped back minimalist layer one blockchain that offers users the infrastructure that makes it easy to deploy their own blockchain, or layer two rollup. in the future, we’ll all be able to have our own blockchains. and it represents …

The excitement around Ethereum’s (ETH) upcoming upgrade, The Merge, which involves the merger of two blockchains — Mainnet Ethereum and Beacon Chain — has unknowingly spurred rumors across the community. Termed the most significant upgrade in the history of Ethereum, The Merge does indeed mark the end of proof-of-work (PoW) for the Ethereum blockchain. However, here are five misconceptions that stand out among the rest. Misconception 1: Ethereum gas fees will reduce after The Merge Ethereum’s impending upgrade will reduce Ethereum’s infamous gas fees (transaction fees) is one of the biggest misconceptions circulating among investors. While reduced gas fees tops …

Institutional staking of crypto assets, including the post-Merge Ethereum, could become a “phenomenon” in the future, but not while their assets still need to be “locked up.” Speaking during a Q2 earnings call on Aug. 9, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Alesia Haas noted that she didn’t expect their new exclusive institutional staking service, rolled out in Q2, to be a “near-term phenomenon” until a “truly liquid staking option” is available. “This is the first time we had the products available. Previously, the way that institutions could have access to staking is via Coinbase Cloud [...] But offering it as the …