In one of the largest philanthropy efforts ever seen in the crypto community, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, donated over $1B in cryptocurrencies Ether and Dogecoin look-alike (SHIB, ELON, AKITA), to India’s Covid Relief Fund and other few charities.
At the beginning of the month, we saw the crypto community come together and start a crypto fund in India to help the country fight the ongoing pandemic. This fund was initiated by an Indian tech entrepreneur and the co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal, and saw contributions from several people, including Vitalik Buterin, who donated Ethereum for over $600,000.
Buterin recently became the world’s youngest cryptocurrency billionaire at the young age of 27. He has been popular for his giving back to the community attitude and recently donated over 50 trillion SHIB (Shibu Inu meme coin) and 500TH worth around $1.14 billion to India’s COVID-Crypto Relief Fund.
Naliwal gratefully accepted the contribution and assured Buterin and SHIB investors that the donation would be used responsibly. He tweeted, “We will not do anything which hurts any community especially the retail community involved with SHIB,”
Buterin also donated more meme coins, such as Dogelon (ELON) and Akita Inu (AKITA), that he received from the coin creators as gifts. Other than that, Buterin donated Elon and Ethereum worth $336 million to Methuselah Foundation, 13,000 ETH to Givewell, and AKITA worth $441 million to Gitcoin Community, MIRI, and Charter Cities Institute.
The popularity of Dogecoin and its recent traction have given birth to more meme coins that are not at their level yet. However, these coins have managed to collect billions of dollars from investors that strengthen their foundation.
While the country struggles to fight the pandemic, donations and support have been pouring in from several places. The contribution from Buterin to India’s Covid-crypto relief fund will force the Indian government to accept the huge opportunity the crypto community presents, and they cannot turn a blind eye to it anymore. This donation could start the much-needed crypto revolution in India.
According to co-founder Vitalik Buterin, more than 1% of the Ethereum supply has already been staked on the deposit contract.
A news publication on Beincrypto claimed that the staking of ETH 2.0 was slow because more than 1% of the supply was already staked on the deposit contract last month. However, they were not able to reach the target; the new blockchain is launched as planned on December 1st.
Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder, said that despite the one percent already staked in the deposit contract, it is doing “better than I expected.” The Ethereum 2.0 Launchpad is below the 1.1 ETH that is deposited in generating 14.6% annual percentage for stalkers.
According to Beaconscan, there are under 35,000 validators for the moment in the ETH. BeInCrypto, which is a news platform for crypto had this to tweet about the Ethereum supply already staked.
The supply of Ethereum is around 113 million ETH, and more than 1% had been staked for now. The co-founder said the total was close to 113 million ETH that includes the stuck as well as the lost funds.
A news report on DeFi Pulse claimed that less than 7 million ETH are locked in different DeFi protocols, and it comes to around 6% of the total supply. The staking was done manually; however it is expected that centralized exchanges may begin giving delegated staking services.
The holders need to have a stake less than the 32 ETH to become a validator. Most of the transactions, which include smart contract operations, decentralized applications can still run using the ETH 1.0 chain.
It will happen until ETH 1.0 and ETH 2.0 get merged, which may occur in 2022; stakers may get the highest awards that can decrease with time. That is because more ETH will get staked.
At the moment, the prices of ETH were below $600. Last week on Friday saw it plunging to the $560 mark. It seems to form a consolidation channel that ranges in the $590. Another decision may be made by Bitcoin if it can break $20000.
The ETH has found it difficult to go beyond the $800 range as it often finds itself just short of it.
In a tweet the Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, believed it was unsettling that Ethereum and Bitcoin do not have official channels despite being the two biggest network in the Blockchain industry.
We should put resources toward a proper (trustless, serverless, maximally Uniswap-like UX) ETH <-> BTC decentralized exchange. It's embarrassing that we still can't easily move between the two largest crypto ecosystems trustlessly.
He also implied that there is no free-flow between the networks which is not a good sign and also wanted to work on new approaches that would propose to make a Decentralized exchange or DEX to close the widening gap between the two. DEX lets cryptocurrency holders trade with each other directly on a peer-to-peer basis without the need for an intermediary. There cannot be an exchange of trade between cryptocurrency and fiat currency as fiat currencies need a central party for recording account balances.
This can be equated to Uniswap which is the automated Ethereum exchange as per Buterin. If the DEX is established it will reduce this gap but also best practices for decentralized exchanges in general. The ongoing issue of poor liquidity in the market will also benefit to a great extent.
Interoperability in simple terms implies the ability to share and access different levels of information across diverse networks without the need for any intermediaries. This sort of interoperability can only be achieved with the presence of DEX. The different blockchain networks operated independently like for instance, the Bitcoin blockchain operates separately from the Ethereum network which is chiefly the issue highlighted.
He also hinted that Zcash could be onboarded next as he is already in the discussion mode with the Coin company head honcho Zooko Wilcox.
In an earlier statement given by Buterin, he provided his wholehearted support for privacy coins ascertaining that they are much better than Central Bank digital currencies (CBDC). For legitimate users, privacy coins are preferable as they can publicly make transparent their financial transactions. It will remove the scope of sourcing ill-gotten funds in the system and also remain anonymous thereby hampering the entire network of transactions.
Casper is Ethereum’s chosen Proof of Stake protocol, headed up by team leader Vlad Zamfir. The code is available here on Github.
The protocol implements a process the dev team claims can punish malicious elements:
The validators stake a portion of their Ethers as stake.
After that, they will start validating the blocks. Meaning, when they discover a block which they think can be added to the chain, they will validate it by placing a bet on it.
If the block gets appended, then the validators will get a reward proportionate to their bets.
However, if a validator acts in a malicious manner and tries to do a “nothing at stake”, they will immediately be reprimanded, and all of their stake is going to get slashed.
Anyone who acts in a malicious manner will get immediately punished by having their stake slashed. This is where it differs from most other POS protocols. Malicious elements have something to lose so it is impossible for there to be nothing at stake.
The protocol also designs incentives that punish miners who go offline, intentionally or otherwise (source: Blockgeeks)
Now, while it sounds like a well-thought out system, there’s the possibility that miners won’t take kindly to the penalties induced for going offline. They could lose their stake through a simple accident or power cut, meaning they have to be extra careful.
In a moment we’ll get into whether this could create a rift within the mining community, but we’re not quite done exploring Casper’s features yet.
Two Sides to the Story
Casper is actually divided into two parts:
Casper the Friendly Finality Gadget (FFG)
Casper the Friendly GHOST: Correct-by-Construction (CBC)
Casper FFG is also referred to as Vitalik’s Casper, and it’s is a hybrid POW/POS consensus protocol.
1. Today I am going to make a tweet storm explaining the history and state of Ethereum's Casper research, including the FFG vs CBC wars, the hybrid => full switch, the role of randomness, mechanism design issues, and more.
Casper is going to start off with FFG which is essentially phase one of the big move to POS. After that the project will transition into phase two, making Ethereum ready for POS.
With FFG, every 49 blocks will still be PoW but the 50th block will be a “PoS checkpoint” where finality is assessed by the miners/forgers.
Finality basically means that when a process or transaction has been completed, it’s irreversible.
The CBC protocol will see the network position itself to make the change to PoS smoothly. But why?
The Advantages
The Advantages are pretty clear.
The enormous energy consumption of Proof of Work is crazy and posing a real threat to the environment. From a more local standpoint, advocates of PoS claim that it is more decentralized and helps improve scaling opportunities, economic efficiency, and rarity – Ethereum will become a rarer commodity after Casper is implemented due to mining incentives. Blocks will soon be rewarded with 0.82 ETH as opposed to 3 ETH which will reduce the inflation rate.
The Disadvantages – Mining Incentive
The only potential problem foreseeable, at the moment, is the potential for miners to abandon ship, potentially turning to Ethereum Classic (ETC), the orignal Ethereum PoW protocol requiring miners to validate transactions.
The issue with the Proof of Stake protocol is that miners don’t play the same role as they do in Proof of Work – miners running ASIC mining rigs or computers kitted out with top of the line GPUs working overtime to crack complex algorithms in order to validate block transactions and receive rewards aren’t required here, with a democratic system of validators taking their place. Is there a possibility that members of the Ethereum community will switch over to the ETC team in order to preserve that role? Yes, it’s a distinct possibility – the question is, how many?
Two weeks ago redditor called beezer0005 stated:
“Not a single care with miners. Lol, if you’ve been following eth, they actually don’t care with miners. The reason casper is always delayed is simply it’s not ready yet.”
Another user called FaceDeer said:
“If the miners want to keep mining the PoW fork, but the users have moved over to the PoS fork (because it’s got significant improvements in how it functions for users), that’s fine. The miners can have their irrelevant little fork that nobody is interested in paying them to secure. It won’t affect the PoS fork in the slightest.
In fact, I’d say it’d be a good thing to have them keep the PoW chain running for a little while just in case PoS suffers an unforeseen catastrophic failure right after launch. PoS will be a big and complicated upgrade, the old PoW chain would serve as an emergency backup in that case.
Comments like these speak to the potential rift growing into the Ethereum community which already fractured recently with a hard fork leading to two prominent cryptocurrencies.”
The Developer’s Outlook
Vitalik Buterin has previously warned against a war on Ethash mining and ASIC mining within the Ethereum community.
“Worst case scenario is basically like that Bitmain controls a very large portion of the Ethereum network for some period of time,” Buterin added. “This is not Bitcoin, right? Miners are not in control here. If there comes a day when they have majority hashpower and try to use it for evil, then it will basically just speed up Casper development.”
Casper is seen by the team as a means to decentralize the network and take the power from the hands of those capable of shelling out millions for state of the art crypto-mining farms and facilities with hundreds of GPU or ASIC rigs churning away to grant the owners a disproportionately influential voice in the community when it comes to voting and validating transactions. The move is designed to discourage the possibility of mining cartels taking over and positioning themselves to carry out a 51% PoW attack, as we have seen in many PoW coin networks recently like Bitcoin Gold.
It’s not going to make the miners happy to see a reduction in block reward, and yes, many of them may leave by Casper FFG in advance of their role being completely changed as opposed to applying for validator roles in the upcoming PoS system. Casper may prove to be a success in the Ethereum network, or it may prove to be yet another divisive element that splits the community yet again.
However, with the multitude of problems being faced by PoW coins recently – all I can say is that Casper is worth a shot.
$25 million stolen from Decentralized Exchange Bancor
Another day, another hack. It seems like no exchange is safe out there, not even the decentralized type. If you recall DEX Exchanges were supposed to offer greater security due to their decentralized set up. Guess the jury is still out on this one. Whatever your stance so many hackings have taken place it makes you wonder if these exchanges are doing too little to tighten security. Bancor was hacked, again, for $13 million after one of the their upgrade wallets was compromised. The vast majority stolen was Ethereum.
After raising $150 million in their ICO, you would think Bancor would have invested some of that in their security procedures. Read more about it below. Let’s get this dispatch rocking! (I’m trying new lead-ins, ok. Cut me some slack)
The top 5 looks like it’s locked in for the near future. The overall cryptocurrency market dropped week to week from $267bln to $249bln representing a 6% decrease in the past seven days. No drastic moves or bart patters this week even with the Bancor hacking news AND the mining hack. It’s been a rather poor week in the news cycle for our beloved crypto.
Bitcoin (BTC): BTC struggled this week and nestled into the $6,200 support, for the time being. 2018 sucks y’all. This represents a drop of 4%, not bad considering the swings many crypto enthusiasts are accustomed to.
Ethereum (ETH): It’s getting boring watching ETH do what BTC does. Week to week ETH sank 6% $439 as of this post. Ethereum continues to be the poster boy for a gre place to develop DAPPs but other chains and projects are catching up. With Caspers successful release to update Herrumbres economic consensus protocol, things seem pretty hum-drum here.
DASH (DASH): Dashcoin cryptocurrency was created on 18 January 2014 by its developer Evan Duffield and was originally released as XCoin (XCO). In February of the same year (2014), the name was changed to “Darkcoin.” Moreover, on 25 March 2015, Darkcoin was rebranded as simply “Dash”. Quite the saga, huh?
As it stands, Dash users can now opt for full privacy in their transactions and remain completely anonymous, thanks to Evan Duffield. Dash has three main features: speed of transactions, masternodes and private send. As you can see in 2017 DASH reached all time hish peaking at $1,600 per DASH but like the entire crypto market has retraced to $226 as of this post. Can you imagine how much the Masternode owners must have raked in during that run? Well played to those that got in early and believed in the project.
Etherpoly.io is launching a new decentralized Ethereum game – Etherpoly.io (OLY) is a new decentralized game in which users can interact by acquiring, improving and trading virtual cities. It is a new decentralized game in which users can interact by acquiring, improving and trading virtual cities. Read on for more details!
Sleeping Giants of Crypto– While the January crash wiped a huge chunk of market cap off the map with aftershocks rippling through the marketplace ever since, there are a number of projects that have weathered the storm well and continue to show promise for the future. Is your favorite project on the list?
What Are Exchange Tokens? – A recent trend in the crypto space has seen exchanges listing their own custom cryptocurrency tokens, generally offering a trade fee discount when the tokens are used. Binance is often credited with kickstarting the trend into mainstream use with the highly successful BNB token, and other exchanges have followed suit. So how do all these tokens measure up, and what do they do exactly?
New Github Repository Catalogs Physical Bitcoin Attacks – Cryptocurrency hacks have always been a thorn in the side of crypto enthusiasts. It seems like we can’t go a few months without a major theft taking place. Jameson Lopp, created an open source repository to catalog and list all known physical bitcoin attacks/thefts. Check it out, it’s fascinating stuff. And a lesson. Because if anything we here at Crypto is Coming want to share teachable mome….lol I can’t finish that.
Vitalik Buterin Says Centralized Exchanges Can Burn In Hell – Sassy. We love it. Outspoken Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has hit out at centralized exchanges, saying that he hopes they “burn in hell as much as possible” while speaking to John Evans of TechCrunch. He has mirrored the opinions of divisive self-proclaimed voice of cryptocurrency, John McAfee.
Visualizing the ICO Explosion – The ICO market exploded in 2017. We saw Billions of dollars pour into crypto through this new crowdsourcing vehicle. Take a look at the infographics below from the crew at howmuch.net.
Litecoin Foundation and TokenPay buy stake in WEG Bank AG – Litecoin founder, Charlie Lee, announced via twitter this morning that the Litecoin Foundation and Token Pay have entered into a partnership to buy a stake in German bank, WEG Bank AG. IN acquiring this stake, they hope to work on consumer driven cryptocurrency solutions for Litecoin and other cryptos.
Opera Launching A Browser With Built-In Crypto Wallet Functionality – Opera has announced that it is launching a new Android based browser that will incorporate a cryptocurrency wallet directly in the software. The browser will support the Ethereum Web3 API, and this function means that users will no longer have to open a separate browser to send and receive payments or check their crypto balance.
What Happens When The Bitcoin Reaches 21 Million And Mining Reward Runs Out? – Bitcoin transactions can only be verified by mining, a process in which powerful computers solve complex algorithms in order to add new blocks of verified transactions to the blockchain. What happens when there is no more reward? Check out our latest piece from Conor.
From Nick Szabo to Naval: The best crypto twitter threads of the week – We all know Cryptocurrencies are at the forefront of innovation in finance and tech. But the people involved in crypto are also leading the way, fighting in the intellectual battle ground that is crypto twitter to see which ideas gain strength and which die off.
CRYPTOCURRENCY NEWS FROM AROUND THE INTERNET
Another hack rocks cryptocurrency trading: Bancor loses $13.5 million – The alleged hack has raised questions over the validity of the start-up’s “decentralized” system. This week, the start-up said that a wallet being used to “upgrade” smart contracts was compromised. This wallet was then used to withdraw $12.5 million in Ethereum (ETH), alongside $1 million in Pundi X (NPXS) and $10 million in Bancor Network Tokens (BNT).
Ledger launches Ledger Live, the all-in-one companion app to your Ledger device – Ledger Live is a new all-in-one companion application for your Ledger device that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. We’ve built Ledger Live from the ground-up to deliver a feature-packed, yet user-friendly experience for both power users and newbies.
Bank of Korea Says Cryptocurrency Poses Little Risk to Domestic Market– The Bank of Korea (BOK) recently announced that cryptocurrencies pose little risk to South Korea’s domestic market, Cointelegraph reported. The analysis comes in the wake of the institution’s publication of a report covering the influence of virtual currencies in the country’s financial industry.
Malta is Creating a Decentralized Bank with the Help of Binance – Binance is seeking to use Malta as the base for a new bank that will be owned entirely by cryptocurrency investors–the world’s “first decentralized, completely community-owned bank,” according to a Bloomberg report.
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