Last summer, Polkadot made its own little bit of history after confirming the first five projects to occupy parachain slots on its canary network Kusama. Disparate blockchains that bolt onto Polkadot’s main Relay Chain for security, yet are otherwise independent, parachains represent a new way of doing business in blockchain, a maximalist vision aimed at enhancing scalability and governance while permitting the possibility of forkless upgrades. The five projects were Karura, Moonriver, Shiden, Khala and Bifrost. Fast-forward to today, and the first batch of parachains are set to expire, releasing over 1 million locked Kusama (KSM) tokens into the market. …

Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), continues to face downside risks in a higher interest rate environment. But one analyst believes that the token's next selloff move could turn into a bear trap as the market factors in the possible release of the Merge this coming August. ETH to $4K? Ether's price could reach $4,000 by 2022's end, according to a technical setup shared on May 20 by Wolf, an independent market analyst. The analyst envisioned ETH moving inside a multi-month ascending triangle pattern, which comprises a horizontal trendline resistance and rising trendline support. Notably, ETH's latest retest of the structure's …

Ethereum’s long-awaited migration to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, which has been pushed back time and time again, looks set to occur sometime in August — hopefully. Preston Van Loon, a core developer of the Ethereum network, told attendees at the Permissionless conference that the transition, known as The Merge, would occur sometime in August if everything plays out according to plan. Ethereum core Dev @preston_vanloon just said the eth merge is ready,they are now only testing, and expects the merge to happen in August. Packed room @Permissionless are excited about it. Great question @TrustlessState. Also on panel @drakefjustin pic.twitter.com/vX4beNatJ5 …

The past thirty days have been an extremely bearish time for cryptocurrencies. The sector's aggregate market capitalization plunged 33% to $1.31 trillion and Solana's (SOL) downfall has been even more brutal. Currently, SOL has seen a 50% correction and trades at $51. The network aims to overcome the Ethereum blockchain's scalability problem by incorporating a proof-of-history (PoH) mechanism into a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. With PoH, Solana delegates a central node to determine a transaction time that the entire network can agree on. The low fees delivered by the Solana network have enticed developers and users alike, but the frequent network …

The Ethereum ecosystem is set for a “huge testing milestone,” with the Ropsten testnet Merge set to be conducted on June 8. According to the Merge testnets page on GitHub, Ethereum DevOps engineer Parathi Jayanathi submitted a pull request for the Ropsten testnet Merge configuration code on Monday, suggesting the implementation is ready to go. Ropsten is one of several testnets created by the Ethereum Foundation in 2017 and is currently maintained by the Geth developer team. This specific testnet is seen as the best replication of the Ethereum Mainnet as it follows a similar network structure. This enables developers …

Ahead of Ethereum’s highly anticipated switch to proof-of-stake (PoS), cybersecurity firm Cloudflare is set to launch and fully stake Ethereum validator nodes over the next few months. It aims to study energy efficiency, consistency management and network speed of the PoS network as part of its commitment to environmental sustainability and to help “build a better internet.” Cloudflare was founded in 2010 and provides web security services such as distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mitigation to protect clients from DDoS attacks. Cloudflare said it was experimenting with the “next generation of Web3 networks that are embracing proof of stake,” with Ethereum being …

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto exchange FTX, has criticized the efficiency of Bitcoin (BTC) as a payment network, only to meet heavy backlash from the crypto community. During an interview with the Financial Times, Bankman-Fried fueled environmental concerns associated with the Bitcoin network’s mining consensus proof-of-work (PoW) and claimed it's not scalable enough to accommodate millions of transactions. He advocated for the use of proof-of-stake (PoS) mining consensus instead and claimed it is better suited for blockchain payment networks. He said: “Things that you’re doing millions of transactions a second with have to be extremely efficient and lightweight and …

The Terra rescue story continues to unravel. In a tweet thread, the Terra Money Twitter account went into greater detail regarding the CEO of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon’s, rescue plan for UST. The thread sheds light on Proposal 1164, Do Kwon’s initial strategy for Terra from May 11. The proposal would better balance the algorithmic stablecoin Terra USD (UST) by expanding the base pool for the currency. The proposal has received 220,000 votes, at over 50%. The tweet thread also explains that there is a “supply overhang” of UST which explains Terra’s (LUNA) “dilution,” or price depreciation. As a result, …

As cryptocurrency staking is growing increasingly popular, one may wonder about staking opportunities of not only crypto exchanges or software wallets but also hardware wallets. By definition, staking allows investors to earn crypto without selling their holdings but rather by delegating crypto to a staking validator to support a blockchain. Originating from the word “stake,” the staking process refers to gaining profits and an associated passive income from crypto through a consensus mechanism known as proof-of-stake (PoS), as opposed to the mining-based proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism of Bitcoin (BTC). Amid the growing popularity of PoS, staking has been growing quite popular …

How should one begin their staking journey? It is necessary to conduct due research about all available crypto staking pools for a particular crypto token and choose those with a proven track record. Unlike crypto mining, crypto staking doesn’t involve investing in mining equipment to generate returns. There are several crypto staking pools that are currently available for different cryptocurrencies that operate on a PoS blockchain and it is suggested that investors choose notable crypto exchanges that operate public stake pools over private staking pools that may offer a higher APY. Apart from considering the stake pool’s ranking, it is …

Bitcoin (BTC), the original cryptocurrency that started it all and even today continues to drive the market sentiments, has faced numerous challenges along the way. The latest challenge seems to be around its mining consensus, proof-of-work (PoW) and its consequent impact on the environment. Bitcoin network’s high energy consumption was one of the hottest topics last year, with the likes of Elon Musk fueling the sentiment that BTC in its current form is bad for the environment. Luckily enough, the mining companies for some time have been exploring the use of renewable energy, and the latest reports suggest that 58% …

A bill was proposed in Rhode Island’s House of Representatives that would credit a house builder in a “green coin” cryptocurrency for reducing the project’s carbon footprint. The Green Housing Public-Private Partnership Act would oblige the state’s public utility commission to issue annual reports on the utility costs and carbon emissions of a housing project. If the project has been able to reduce its utility costs, the state will award a cryptocurrency credit to the property owner. “Any reduction 24 amount of utility costs attributable to any housing construction project pursuant to this chapter shall 25 be assigned a credit …