Technology

Bitcoin Core lead maintainer Wladimir van der Laan has decided to take “even more” of a “background role” for the sake of further decentralizing the project, according to a new blog post.  Bitcoin Core is the key software underpinning the Bitcoin network. While van der Laan’s work is mostly “janitorial” in nature, making sure the

OKCoin is the latest crypto exchange to support Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Per details shared with CoinDesk, the exchange is in the final phases of integrating the secondary scaling network. It should be live within 3-4 weeks, OKCoin’s team told CoinDesk. “We have been a bitcoin exchange since 2013 and while we are excited about DeFi

“I’ve been working on a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer, with no trusted third party.” Those were the words pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto used to greet the world some twelve years ago in an email releasing the Bitcoin white paper. To this day, nobody still knows who he/she/they actually are. And since April

Interest in Bitcoin “double-spending” grew after recent news that the Bitcoin network processed the same bitcoin (BTC) in two transactions – the very “double-spending” scenario Bitcoin was specifically designed to prevent. Except the double-spend didn’t happen, at least not in the traditional sense. “The bitcoin ‘double-spend’ media headline has certainly spooked investors, but it’s a

Ethereum miners have formed a cartel of sorts to thwart the implementation of a now contentious proposal – one they say cuts into their bottom line unfairly. Eight Ethereum mining pools amounting to around 30% of the network’s hash power have cast their support behind tiny mining pool Flexpool’s stance against Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)

Firo (formerly known as Zcoin) has experienced a 51% attack and is now in the throes of a hash war. Firo recommends users not make transactions at this time, and said it is working with exchanges and pools to mitigate the damage. The team has also asked that all wallets and masternodes be upgraded with a newly

Bitcoin may be the original cryptocurrency, but that doesn’t mean leading decentralized finance (DeFi) projects aren’t feeling self-confident enough to distinguish themselves from Satoshi’s vision. “Let’s not be Bitcoin. This idea of hard caps for start-ups is very romantic but not necessarily the best execution path for maximal value,” a participant in Yearn’s governance forums,

What is the intrinsic value of ether?  This is a question I’ve been wrestling with this past week as the ether price set a new all-time high of $1,439.33, according to CoinDesk’s price index. Similar to how many view the current bitcoin price bull run as being credibly different from previous cycles for reasons to

The InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a decentralized peer-to-peer protocol designed to make the web less centralized and to avoid censorship, has been integrated into the desktop web browser Brave, making it the first browser to have a native IPFS integration. The move continues to add accessibility to IPFS, allowing Brave users to access content on

The publisher of the upcoming online space strategy game “Infinite Fleet” is providing a chance to buy into equity and share in future profits through the launch of a public security token offering (STO). Announced Monday, Luxembourg-based Exordium has just launched the token-based funding round in select European countries. The tokens are priced at $0.50

Paxos is teaming up with Chainlink in a bid to make its asset-backed tokens more widely available across the decentralized finance (DeFi) market. The Paxos Standard (PAX) and Paxos Gold (PAXG) tokens are now available on Chainlink’s oracle network, according to a blog post shared early with CoinDesk. Chainlink operates as background pricing and data

Privacy coin Firo, previously known as Zcoin, has launched the new protocol Lelantus on its mainnet.  The implementation introduces “on-by-default” privacy and prompts users to anonymize their funds with the goal of ensuring transactions sent by official Firo wallets stay private. Transparent transactions will now have to be explicitly selected. It also allows for partial

Numerous exchanges, like Bittrex, have delisted coins that have features to protect user privacy. Explanations of why they’ve done so have been vague or non-existent. It has set up clashes between the exchanges and Zcash, Monero and Dash over whether there is actually regulatory pressure to do so.  There is a question that no one

Optimism has “soft launched” its solution to Ethereum’s transaction problem, the Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM). The startup announced Friday that OVM is now live, at a time when gas fees have reached near all-time highs for decentralized finance (DeFi) traders. Indeed, the cost to send a single Ethereum transaction has hovered in the low single-digit

An India-based startup is coming for decentralized finance (DeFi) stalwart MakerDAO’s crown with the launch of its new “valuecoin.” MahaDAO’s ARTH algorithmic stablecoin is now live on the Ethereum mainnet, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk. ARTH will also go live on the Matic network at an undisclosed point in the future, the

Originally slated for December 1, 2020, Bitcoin Core version 0.21.0 is now available for download, and includes a handful of notable changes to Bitcoin’s primary software implementation. Most notably, Bitcoin now supports Tor’s latest address format, Taproot’s code is now live for testing and Bitcoin Core finally gets manual fee setting. With Bitcoin’s price pumping,