Since the start of February, Harmony (ONE) has rallied by 230% and while the proof-of-stake smart contract platform benefited from Ethereum’s skyrocketing gas fees, the recent meteoric rise appears to be driven by more fundamental factors. Although other scaling-focused solutions such as Cosmos (ATOM), Solana (SOL), NEAR, and OMG also rallied during the same time period, Harmony's performance stands out. Harmony is a sharding protocol with a trustless Ethereum bridge that separates the chain into segments that process transactions and store data in parallel. It's considered a layer-2 solution as it splits both the nodes and blockchain states into shards. …

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 …

The Cardano Foundation's coin ADA, hit its all-time high of $0.97 on Feb. 12, having started the year trading at $0.18, thus entailing 438% gains year to date. Apart from the macro trends in the cryptocurrency industry driving up the price of flagship assets, such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) translating to other altcoins, such as LINK, DOT, etc., Cardano’s growth could also be attributed to the network updates that Cardano has been running on its blockchain network. On Feb. 3, Cardano’s development firm Input Output Hong Kong successfully conducted a hard fork and also applied the Goguen native …

Since Feb. 6 Pundi X (NPXS) has rallied by 102%. While it would be easy to assume that it’s breakout is simply following in the hoof prints of the herd of altcoins that have been rallying alongside Bitcoin, the current move appears to be driven by an upcoming testnet launch and improving fundamentals. Pundi X is a borderless digital currency payment ecosystem that aims to boost adoption using Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals and a contactless payment card. Using an open-source system, the platform focuses on physical stores retail payments. Streamlined mobile payments is another problem which the Pundi X ecosystem aims …

Cardano’s (ADA) price has increased 100% since Feb. 1 as social media engagement and excitement about the addition of smart contract functionality is propelling ADA to its highest price level since the bull market of January 2018. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that ADA rose from $0.35 on Feb. 1 to its current price of $0.71, a move which has elevated Cardano to the 4th ranked cryptocurrency by total market cap. The first surge started after the team upgraded its delegation interface on Daedalus. Another noticeable uptick in buying volume began on Feb. 4 after Cardano tweeted about …

Chinese cryptocurrency miners are reportedly buying Nvidia's new laptops to mine Ether (ETH) amid the altcoin hitting new all-time highs. Nvidia’s latest GeForce RTX 30 laptops have become increasingly popular in China as a tool for mining cryptocurrency, according to several sources. On Feb. 6, a Weibo user known as BTCer posted a bunch of images showing off GeForce RTX 30 series gaming laptops making up a solid crypto mining farm. “A laptop mine is up ,” BTCer noted in the post depicting dozens of laptops stacked up on shelves. Several tech media outlets including VideoCardz and Wccftech subsequently suggested …

Ether hit its all-time high again on Feb. 2, reaching the psychological mark of $1,500. Since then, its price has remained above this level and is currently sitting at around the $1,700 mark. Along with Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, Ether (ETH) has seen outstanding price action since the start of 2021, having surged by 10.46% in a month. While Bitcoin has also been seeing positive price action, it is shy of its previous all-time high of $41,941 reached on Jan. 8. Ether volumes have been on the rise. According to market data provider CryptoCompare, spot volumes reached their all-time …

Republican Rep. Tom Emmer has called for more precise tax guidelines regarding cryptocurrency earnings, after a report he commissioned from the Law Library of Congress showed a stark disparity between regulatory approaches taken by various tax authorities around the world. The 128-page study examines cryptocurrency tax laws in 31 nations, paying particular interest to their applications concerning coins and tokens earned through mining and staking. As the report notes, many countries have already established specific rules for coins earned through mining, but only five have laid down any guidance for would-be stakers. Of the 31 jurisdictions included in the study, …

The price gains enjoyed by Ether as it hits record highs have propelled Eth2 to rank as the third-largest network by staked capitalization. That’s despite the fact that just 2.09% of Ethereum’s supply is locked up in Eth2 at present. Ether pushed into new record price highs above $1,480 on Feb. 2, with ETH currently testing $1,550 after gaining 12% in 24 hours. With nearly 2.5 million ETH currently locked up, Eth2's staked capitalization equals $3.6 billion. The price gains propelled Eth2 past Avalanche’s $3.4 billion in staked assets, with Avalanche’s staked capitalization representing 69.5% of the Avalanche’s supply. Polkadot …

Recent global developments have put a spotlight on the cryptocurrency sector as people across the world begin to question the decision making process of governments and central banks. Multiple metrics like the increasing amount of Ether (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC) locked in DeFi, soaring transaction and on-chain activity and the plummeting BTC and Ether reserves of top exchanges show that investors are becoming increasingly interested in cryptocurrency. Data from CryptoQuant, an on-chain analytics firm, shows that as Ether (ETH) established a new all-time high above $1,500 on Feb. 2, the amount of Ether held on all centralized exchange’s reserves continued …

Seven weeks after the launch of Ethereum 2.0’s beacon chain and 2.25 million ETH has been deposited into the ETH2 contract address, signaling growing confidence in the long-awaited rollout of ETH2. More than 66,360 beacon chain validators have been created as part of Ethereum’s transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Data provided by smart contract experts at Dune Analytics suggests that more ETH is now being staked by individual contributors than single addresses with large balances, which had dominated flows to the Eth2 contract throughout December and the first half of January. my takeaway: the combination of …

Social media mentions about Cardano have been growing since the beginning of the year, and during this time, the price of its ADA token has more than doubled, in the process surpassing Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to become the sixth-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. A deeper dive into data from Twitter data failed to identify a specific driver of ADA’s bullish price action, but data from The Tie did show that Cardano mentions recently reached an all-time high, with the price tracking the increase. Keyword analysis of Cardano-related tweets also failed to identify the motivating factor behind the recent social media …