Tag: Blockchains

Blockchain’s demographics seem to be shifting in surprising ways, says new report

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People in their 20s and 30s now appear to make up the majority of crypto traders worldwide. This represents a shift away from previous numbers, which indicated not so long ago that people in their 30s and 40s made up Blockchain’s main demographic. According to a Sept. 7 report from BitFlyer, the biggest crypto exchange in Japan by trading volume, the ratio of its users in their 20s doubled in the EU, Japan, and the United States compared to data from 2018. In the U.S., BitFlyer traders in their 20s…

Challenging Ethereum 2.0? Competing blockchains are seizing the moment

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After several years in development, Ethereum 2.0 is now more tantalizingly close than ever before. Despite a shaky start with the Medalla testnet, it seems that development is still on track. Prysmatic Labs developer Raul Jordan indicated in a recent blog post that “2 to 3 months from the Medalla genesis block is still an ideal timeline.” At this point, what are another three months? The idea of an upgrade has been floating around in some form since the platform was first launched in 2015. The time it has taken…

Secret contracts may soon bring privacy features to public Blockchains

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Open-source Blockchain protocol Secret Network announced its intention to add privacy-based secret contracts to its mainnet. The upgrade will take place on September 15 once the proposal is passed by the community. According to the foundation’s announcement, developers will have the opportunity to build and deploy so-called “secret” smart contracts that use encrypted inputs, outputs, and states. Secret contracts could enable many different blockchains to utilize private data in decentralized apps without compromising their user’s personal security. The foundation explained: “Secret contracts allow for programmable privacy, allowing for arbitrarily complex…

Blockchains and the Eastern Bloc, August 14–21

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Every Friday, Law Decoded delivers analysis on the week’s critical stories in the realms of policy, regulation and law. Editor’s note The political machinations of Eastern Europe have dominated recent headlines. Protests unprecedented since the fall of the Soviet Union have rocked Belarus for weeks. Outrage over the Aug. 8 election that has seen challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya flee the country has threatened the longtime dominion of Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, the so-called “last dictator in Europe.” Protestors are calling the 80% win for Lukashenko a fraud. The regime has tried…

Business Consensus May be Blockchain’s Main Challenge

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During a Unitize panel on Wednesday, Ali Loveys commented that the biggest challenge in  the blockchain space is not the technology itself, but rather whether the business model or values make sense or not.  Dr. Ali Loveys, the Chief Privacy Officer at ConsenSys Health, has over 30 years of experience in emerging technology strategy, adoption, and optimization in healthcare. The insight she drew from her work experience was that:  “The challenges are always less about the technology, than about the business value and the people who are interested in using…

Polkadot Wants to Enable You to Launch Custom Blockchains in One Hour

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During yesterday’s Unitize blockchain conference, developer Bruno Škvorc illustrated how a Polkadot-based blockchain can be launched within one hour. When speaking at event on July 7, Škvorc explained in detail how to create a blockchain based on Polkadot’s modular “Substrate” architecture. Furthermore, he illustrated how blockchains built this way can be seamlessly updated without needing to hard fork. Škvorc explained that Substrate-based blockchains can be configured by choosing from many available modules to better suit the needs of who is building them. He also claims that — thanks to being…

Building Blockchains Secretly in South America

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Blockchain could bring technological revolution in Latin America said Mario Blacutt, NULS core developer and Nerve Network founder, in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. Blacutt revealed his thoughts on the region’s blockchain environment and the hurdles he faced after former Bolivian President Evo Morales banned cryptocurrencies in 2014. Blacutt, who recently revealed his real name to the public after having hidden under the pseudonym “Berzeck” for several years,” said blockchain technology will “undoubtedly” spark another decade of a technological revolution in Latin America. Crypto adoption in Latin America “will likely…

Interoperable Blockchains May Be the Future of Finance but Have a Ways Yet to Go

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Cross-chain interoperability is a domain that has piqued the interest of many financial institutions over the years, as it stands to produce a technology that can potentially mitigate a whole host of their recurring operational issues — such as data leakages, loss of customer funds during international transactions and poor accountability — in a totally automated fashion. In this regard, European payments provider SIA recently revealed that it has partnered with United Kingdom-based tech firm Quant Network after having successfully concluded a series of cross-blockchain interoperability tests designed to facilitate…

Stablecoins Can Transfer Value Across Blockchains, Says Vitalik Buterin

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin thinks that the stablecoin industry is missing a valuable opportunity to improve interoperability between different blockchains.  In a lengthy Twitter thread on May 20, Buterin suggested that stablecoins could enable users to move value across different blockchains: “In the specific case of issuer-backed stablecoins there’s lots of things that could be done but aren’t, eg. every stablecoin could be an instant cross-chain bridge!” Bitcoin (BTC) activist and independent developer Udi Wertheimer pointed out that something similar to what Buterin suggested is already possible with cryptocurrency exchanges.…

Enterprise Blockchains: Seven Steps to Success

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In my approximately two-decade career at Microsoft, I had the privilege and the opportunity to first work on the company’s emerging enterprise strategy, to architect and ship key enterprise technologies, and to build a strategic enterprise business and profit and loss. I think I can say with some level of credibility that I understand the enterprise software business well, and this is what leads me to the question of why enterprise blockchain adoption is still gently meandering along. First, let us start with the question of how emerging technologies typically…