Consumers in Dubai will soon be able to use digital currency to pay for goods, services, and utilities following a new government partnership, a press release confirms Tuesday, Oct. 9. The deal between emcredit, a subsidiary of the Dubai Department of Economic Development, blockchain payment provider Pundi X, and its partner Ebooc Fintech & Loyalty Labs LLC will facilitate point of sale (PoS) payments in emcredit’s emcash currency. Ebooc will provide PoS terminals for in-store payments, while Pundi X plans to roll out 100,000 units globally over the next three years, the press release notes. Emcash is pegged to the …

“Big Four” audit and consulting firm Deloitte has outlined five basic areas of development for blockchain technology in order achieve widespread adoption, according to a study published September 28. According to Deloitte, in order to be adopted by enterprises on a mass scale, blockchain technology should overcome five major obstacles – the possibility of time-consuming operations, lack of standardization, high costs and complexity blockchain applications, regulatory uncertainty, as well as the absence of collaboration between blockchain-related firms. Identifying the area that needs the most development, Deloitte singled out the problem of possible operational delays on a distributed ledger network. The …

Ethereum (ETH) core developers decided on their regular YouTube meeting August 31 to delay the “Difficulty Bomb” by agreeing to include the code for such a change into the upcoming Constantinople hard fork. One of the prime objectives of the Ethereum Foundation lies in the adoption of a new consensus algorithm - Proof-of-Stake (PoS). In order to implement it, the developers came up with a solution called the “Difficulty Bomb,” which makes the production of new blocks more complex and unfavourable. Constantinople is designed to smooth the transition from a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm to PoS. Last week, the developers …

Ethereum (ETH) developers have recently discussed the most significant upcoming updates to the ETH network at Ethereum Core Devs Meeting #40 that took place Friday, June 15. [LIVE] Ethereum Core Developer Meeting #40 [06/15/18] https://t.co/iqucGaNi15 #ethereum #allcoredevs pic.twitter.com/bDvhIpd2n4 — Ethereum (@ethereum) June 15, 2018 The key point of the recent meeting is rescheduling the releases of two main Ethereum chain upgrades such as Casper and sharding. Casper should have been released as a smart contract separately from the sharding upgrade. The new proposals suggest that Casper may be released on a shard, or a sidechain instead. Sharding, announced by Ethereum’s …

The EOS blockchain is set to launch today, June 9, according to the results of a live-streamed vote that took place yesterday, June 8. Candidates to become the EOS blockchain’s so-called “Block Producers” – the equivalent of miners on the Bitcoin blockchain – voted “Go” in their latest voting session to make the EOS mainnet go live at 1:00pm UTC today. The community has yet to confirm that a successful launch has taken place as of press time. EOS LAUNCH IS A GO! The blockchain will launch at 1300 UTC Saturday. GO EOS!! #eosio #blockchain #cryptocurrency — EOS Go (@go_eos) …

Altcoin TRON (TRX) launched a beta version of its independent public blockchain at 12 am UTC, today May 31, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph. Tron is currently the tenth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The move to Tron’s MainNet – also dubbed Odyssey 2.0 – is part of a transition away from the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, which currently underpins the cryptocurrency’s network. According to the press release, MainNet’s beta testing period will span most of June. The full launch of the network’s Genesis block is set to take place on June 25, styled ‘Independence Day’ by the …

Ethereum Classic (ETC) has now successfully implemented a protocol upgrade that will ensure that mining remains viable in future, according to ETC Block Explorer data yesterday, May 29. The fork, dubbed ECIP-1041, has removed the so-called “Difficulty Bomb” feature from the ETC network at block 5,900,000. The ‘bomb’ was a component of the original Ethereum (ETH) code that was designed to exponentially increase the difficulty of mining to the point where it would become impractically slow, thereby triggering the need to transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. This feature has commonly been referred to as the ‘Ethereum Ice Age,’ …

The Chinese government has recently reiterated its negative stance towards Initial Coins Offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrency exchanges at a news conference in Beijing, claiming that financial authorities will continue to monitor private lenders’ interest rates, securities companies, and futures firms to combat illegal fundraising, Reuters reports April 23. In a joint statement provided by several regulators, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) stated that it will continue to fight risks from internet financing and highlighted that ICO projects and trading platforms have been closed to the benefit of public safety. According to the joint statement, the regulations have managed to …

The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Cointelgraph.com Proof of Stake (PoS) was first introduced in a paper by Sunny King and Scott Nadal in 2012 and intended to solve the problem of Bitcoin mining’s high energy consumption. At that time, it cost an average of $150,000 a day to maintain the Bitcoin network. Today, this figure is at a staggering $6.7 million (if we assume a $0.12/watt cost and multiply that with the estimated 56,209,833 KWh of electricity that the Bitcoin network consumed on Oct. 13, 2017). Rather than relying …

Use of cryptocurrency has become more accepted and mainstream recently, and in the last six months there have been a couple of significant developments in crypto's progress towards widespread adoption. First, the huge investments and price increases during the "summer of Bitcoin" have put cryptocurrencies in the news and shown they can retain investment value despite shocks. Secondly, the cryptosphere at large has seen a push to address and confront major issues that could impact user adoption long-term. In search for good enough in all respects Among these issues are those of compatibility and interoperability. Forks, lightning networks, and atomic …

A little more than a week after release of NeuCoin's technical whitepaper, an intense debate been sparked between the proponents of the two main crypto technologies, proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS). Online forums including Bitcointalk, Peercointalk and Reddit, as well as NeuCoin’s own forum, have been playing host to the exchanges, which have drawn in not only lay community members but several of its household names. On Reddit, Bitcoin core developer Jeff Garzik began by fiercely defending Bitcoin from PoS supporters’ allegations that PoW is becoming centralized. “Bitcoin has many existing stakeholders. If large mining pools misbehave, the network and …