Volatility coupled with one of the longest bear markets ever experienced by the cryptocurrency industry have compelled many investors to consider staking as a method of “playing it safe,” according to a Bloomberg article. Staking, which is similar to earning dividends or interest on your investment, is not a new concept. However, in a long bear market, it does become more prevalent among cryptocurrency investors, as possible gains from regular trading are not as fruitful. As Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital Management, stated to Bloomberg: “Regardless of market conditions, staking provides returns denominated in the asset being staked. …

New Ethereum (ETH) being generated through mining is at its lowest rate ever, Etherscan data reveals on Feb. 11. According to Etherscan, on Feb. 10, 13,370 new ETH have been created, down from over 20 thousand in December 2018 and an all-time-high of over 39 thousand reported on July 30, 2015. The recent sharp decrease in the quantity of newly mined ETH was evidently caused by a sudden increase in Ethereum mining difficulty, which Etherscan data revealed on Feb. 10. As Cointelegraph reported in September last year, Ethereum’s core developers decided on their regular meeting on August 31, 2018 to …

As reported by Cointelegraph on Jan. 24, the press service of the Massachusetts Technical Institute (MIT) announced the development of a new cryptocurrency design based on the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. Ethereum — Algorand’s closest competitor, according to the existing estimates — will launch its PoS system sometime between 2019 and 2021. Scheduled updates required for a gradual transition from the proof-of-work (PoW) to a PoS algorithm have been regularly postponed by the Ethereum Foundation due to network vulnerabilities and failures in the process of the network’s upgrade. Trilemma: It's all about scalability The term “trilemma” was first used by Vitalik …

A Bloomberg article published today, Feb. 1, suggests that proof-of-stake (PoS) token investors have a unique option to survive the protracted crypto market slump: staking their holdings. In blockchains that use a PoS system — as opposed to proof-of-work (PoW) — nodes in the network engage in validating blocks, rather than mining them. A deterministic algorithm selects block validators based on the number of tokens a given node has staked in their wallet — i.e. deposited as collateral in order to compete to add the next block to the chain. As Bloomberg reports, staking holdings in a PoS network can …

Major crypto investment firm Pantera Capital has lead a seed funding round for crypto staking startup, Staked, the company announced in a blog post Jan. 31. The startup, which targets institutional investors of proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies, announced that it raised $4.5 million in the investment round. According to the post, in addition to Pantera Capital, major firms that participated in the round include Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, Winklevoss Capital, Global Brain, Fabric Ventures and Blocktree Capital. Furthermore, the company also reported that Pantera Capital partner Paul Veradittakit is set to join Staked’s board of directors. Pantera Capital reportedly first contacted …

In the history of blockchain to be written in textbooks, 2018 will probably be known as the year of failing at scaling. An outcry for scalable blockchain systems in 2017 led to a number of companies making attempts at solving the problem of scaling and gradually realising that it’s not that simple. As the year has concluded, ModernToken’s Blockchain Science department presents an overview of known approaches to improving scalability. The great race to reliable scalability started with the outburst of startups and funding campaigns trying to bring distributed ledger technology (DLT) into business and to real-world applications. The first …

Blockchain is featured as a disrupting technology in the Tech Trends 2019 report published by Big Four audit and consulting firm Deloitte on Jan. 16. According to one article in the report, “[a]dvanced networking is the unsung hero of our digital future,” and blockchain is cited as a part of it. The report — which mentions blockchain 25 times — notes that blockchain is among the technologies the importance of which is growing rapidly and still on its path towards mass adoption. The report also cites a International Data Corporation’s (IDC) projection from last year that states worldwide spending on …

The Ethereum Foundation has announced a $5 million grant to United Kingdom-based company Parity Technologies, according to a post on the official Ethereum (ETH) blog published Jan. 7. According to the post, the grant is for scalability, usability and security work. Namely, this money “will fund Parity’s work on Casper, sharding, light clients, developer tools, QA, audits and infrastructure improvements.” Furthermore, the post explains that funding will be delivered in “several tranches, the first of which supports development that Parity has already completed.” The other parts of funding will be each handed over upon the completion of assembly standard eWasm …

Ethereum (ETH) core developers have reached a tentative consensus to implement a new proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm that would decrease the divide in efficiency between ASIC and GPU mining on the network. The development was discussed in a meeting today, Jan. 4. During the meeting, developer Hudson Jameson noted he had heard “very little dissent” to implementing “ProgPoW,” which has so far been trialed via client implementations running on the “Gangnam” testnet. As previously reported, a testnet is essentially a simulated version of the primary network that allows developers to try out upgrades or run smart contracts without having to pay …

A blockchain project with the ambition of being at the forefront of a “brand-new digital economy era” has unveiled its vision for 2019-2020, with five important milestones that will enable its technology to evolve in line with the needs of its user base. VEE, the latest blockchain database project by Sunny King — the creator of PoS — is based on supernode proof-of-stake (SPoS) — a consensus algorithm that the company says is “currently up, running and extremely stable.” With a success rate of up to 99.99 percent for blocks and with a new block produced every four seconds, the …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin declared that future blockchains with sharding based on proof-of-stake (PoS) will be “thousands of times more efficient” in a lengthy Twitter thread posted on Dec. 10. In the long series of tweets, Buterin addressed non-financial applications of blockchain technology. He stated that, as scalability advances (driving fees down) and user experience (UX) gets better, non-financial applications will become “a bigger part of the story.” He further noted that blockchains are not about “cutting computational costs,” but are instead about increasing computational costs while decreasing “social costs.” Buternin stated that computers have become 1 trillion times …

A new project from Dubai, HetaChain, is developing a universal blockchain platform with “industrial scale computational capabilities.” The project is intended to make blockchain more easy-to-use and flexible for regular users and developers. HetaChain aims to help governmental services, businesses, and organizations create decentralized applications (DApps) and integrate them into different industries, such as banking, e-commerce, robotics, and healthcare. Solving blockchain issues The new Heta Blockchain 3.0 Platform, launched in 2018 by Relam Investment and its founder, Sultan Ali Rashed Lootah, runs a hybrid of the Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) and a Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) consensus mechanisms which are designed …