The cost of using the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains is on the rapid decline, as evidenced by a 93%–95% reduction in average transaction fees over the past couple of months. Fees are paid to the miners who process transactions on a typical proof-of-work blockchain. The size of the fee depends on the size of the transaction in bytes and how many transactions a coin has gone through in the past (as these need to be checked every time a coin is moved). Supply and demand for space also dictate the size of a transaction fee since blockchains have limited capacity. …
Charles Hoskinson's IOHK recently published two Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposals, or ECIPs, meant to help the struggling chain recover after a slew of recent 51% attacks. The first introduced a checkpoint system to prevent the possibility of such attacks, and the second proposed a decentralized treasury — a seemingly divisive idea within the ETC community. Following the recent attacks, a heated debate ensued concerning the project's future. Hoskinson, one of Ethereum's co-founders and a supporter of the ETC fork, believes that the way forward revolves around the institution of the decentralized treasury. The proposal suggests that the current method of …
For a tech that was supposed to be democratic and distributed in order to free financial systems from the grip of government-influenced banks and return control of the money supply to the people, cryptocurrencies have turned out to be pretty concentrated. Some 66% of all Bitcoin (BTC) mining now takes place in China, with 54% located in the southwest province of Sichuan, as a recent study revealed. Three Chinese mining pools alone are responsible for nearly half of Bitcoin’s hashrate. The days when a single Bitcoin enthusiast could crunch numbers on their home computer and land a Bitcoin reward for …
A financial company is giving crypto holders the opportunity to take out cash loans while using their digital assets as collateral. YouHodler — whose name is inspired by the term “HODL” — says its product gives the community a way of accessing money without selling their investments. The platform offers loans from $100 to up to $30,000 — also payable in euros and Tether (USDT) — with a maximum loan-to-value of 80 percent, a ratio which YouHodler claims is one of the highest currently available in the industry. Six cryptocurrencies are accepted as collateral, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, XRP, Bitcoin …
Over the last couple of years, the world has been grappling with the lack of semiconductors, which are the substances that conduct electricity between metals and isolates. The most famous semiconductor is silicon. If correlating this concept to electronic devices, then the key semiconductors are processors and other microcircuits that are present in almost all devices that people use every day, from smartphones to cars. In 2021, semiconductors hit a world record in terms of sales. Electronics production also boomed, with hundreds of millions of complex semiconductors being devoured by gaming consoles. The number of GPUs produced grew to unseen …