A new blockchain course offered by the Australian National University (ANU)’s law school commenced this year with support from Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI). Cointelegraph spoke to Lauren Weymouth, the senior manager of the UBRI’s University Partnerships Program, and Scott Chamberlain, the academic running the curriculum, to find out more about how blockchain can disrupt the legal industry and the partnership between the ANU and UBRI. Chamberlain will be working alongside the developer behind the Toast XRPL Wallet, Richard Holland, to develop and deliver the course. ANU law school…
Tag: Blockchains
Hyperledger’s Brian Behlendorf Says Blockchain’s Potential Is “Hitting a Tipping Point”
Last December Brian Behlendorf is the Executive Director of Hyperledger said that 2019 was a year of “careful, prosaic BUIDLING.” Now, in an interview with CoinDesk’s Michael Casey at Davos, Behlendorf said he believes a lot of what the blockchain ecosystem was building is getting closer to becoming a net positive in the world. Citing “double-digit” blockchain usage in the diamond trade for tracing provenance, a variety of blockchain-based digital identity projects, and the rise of central bank-backed digital currency, Behlendorf painted an upbeat picture of a technology moving quietly…
Bitcoin 2020 — Blockchain’s New Year Resolutions
Most of us believe in the “New Year — New Me” rhetoric: I’m going to lose weight, quit smoking, eat healthy, stop being lazy, spend more time with family and whatnot. Yet, losing weight usually only turns into losing motivation instead. But then, it doesn’t really make sense to laugh at our absurdities, as we humans have plenty of them. Not when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, at least. I mean, we can mostly agree that it’s just a hefty to-do list for the first week of January. Now,…
Bitcoin 2020 — Blockchain’s New Year Resolutions
Most of us believe in the “New Year — New Me” rhetoric: I’m going to lose weight, quit smoking, eat healthy, stop being lazy, spend more time with family and whatnot. Yet, losing weight usually only turns into losing motivation instead. But then, it doesn’t really make sense to laugh at our absurdities, as we humans have plenty of them. Not when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, at least. I mean, we can mostly agree that it’s just a hefty to-do list for the first week of January. Now,…
EOSIO Proposal Would Prevent Users From Buying Blockchain’s Resources
EOSIO, the firm behind the EOS blockchain and token, proposed a major change to the network’s resource allocation system that would require users to rent network resources. According to a blog post published by EOSIO on Dec. 21, the proposed changes aim to avoid network congestion caused by the inability to employ unused Central Processing Unit (CPU) time and bandwidth (NET) resources because users own them. According to EOSIO, the network suffers from a poorly designed resource allocation system that allows most of the network’s resources to go unused despite…
DISCUSSION: How Can Public Blockchains Have Privacy?
On today’s show, we discuss the idea of true privacy on public, transparent blockchains and some of the ways it’s working (or not) in Bitcoin or related projects right now. Source
South Korean Startup Claims to Have Solved Blockchain’s Speed Problem
The South Korean-based firm Bloom Technology announced that they have created a new technology that is able to speed up transactions on the blockchain. On Dec. 3, United Press International reported that Bloom Technology’s CEO, Lee Sang-yoon, said that the company’s Lotus Chain technology has been able to reduce blockchain transaction processing times to fractions of a second. One single blockchain transaction takes less than 0.23 seconds The company reportedly conducted a public test with 635 participating nodes to reveal the transaction speed of the Lotus Chain technology. The results…
Bitcoin Is Blockchain’s First Success
The official Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency has published a report recognizing Bitcoin (BTC) as “the first successful application of blockchain technology.” Published today, Nov. 11, the coverage is exceptional given China’s abiding hardline stance against decentralized cryptocurrencies, as epitomized by Beijing’s historic September 2017 blanket ban on crypto exchanges and initial coin offerings. Even-handed exposure The Xinhua article is broadly positive and detailed in its coverage of Bitcoin and the history of its development and evolution. It opens by posing the question of whether the coin represents the “inevitable…
China Will Avoid Blockchain’s ‘Decentralizing Aspects’
China’s forthcoming digital renminbi is unlikely to use blockchain, considers Ethereum (ETH) co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin. In an interview for CNBC’s Squawk Box Asia on Nov. 6, Lubin argued that the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has little to gain — for its purposes — from the decentralized aspects of the technology. “There’s no real reason” for China to make use of decentralization As reported, China’s digital legal tender — or central bank digital currency (CBDC) — will be controlled by the PBoC and officials have said they…
Do Crypto Payment Restrictions Undermine Blockchain’s Core Values?
The power of cryptocurrency payment service providers is under the spotlight after a $100,000 donation to an Amazon rainforest charity was blocked last month. American cryptocurrency payment service provider BitPay reportedly blocked a Bitcoin payment from charity organization Amazon Watch because it had failed the internal processes of the payment platform. It is understood that the charity’s pay limit was set below $100,000 before BitPay advised its staff to change it. The process then came to a halt, as the limit could not be changed automatically without separate documentation. This…