One of the most popular Ethereum clients, OpenEthereum, has ended support for its software in preparation for the upcoming Ethereum Merge. OpenEthereum creates “clients” or software used to interact with the Ethereum network allowing anyone to create an Ethereum node to mine Ether (ETH), which is currently using a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism. In a Twitter thread, the OpenEthereum team explained that with the Merge approaching and the legacy codebase becoming “increasingly difficult to manage” due to its age, it was the right time to end support. OpenEthereum support has officially ended. The repo is now archived, and all maintenance …

The Solana network suffered a seven-hour outage overnight between Saturday and Sunday due to a large number of transactions from the nonfungible token (NFT) minting bots. A record-breaking four million transactions, or 100 gigabits of data per second, congested the network causing validators to be knocked out of consensus resulting in Solana going dark at roughly 8:00 pm UTC on Saturday. It wasn’t until seven hours later on Sunday, 3:00 am UTC that validators were able to successfully restart the main network. Validator operators successfully completed a cluster restart of Mainnet Beta at 3:00 AM UTC, following a roughly 7 …

The much-anticipated ‘Merge’ on the Ethereum network is another step closer to becoming a reality after the final public testnet Kiln launched to put it through its paces. On March 14, the Ethereum Foundation urged network stakeholders to run tests using Kiln “to ensure a smooth transition on existing public testnets.” “We strongly recommend that developers run through a full testing & deployment cycle on Kiln and report any issues with tools or dependencies to those projects’ maintainers.” Ethereum developer Tim Beiko confirmed that Kiln has gone live and will soon be ready to merge with the Beacon Chain in …

The Uniswap community has approved the governance proposal that sought deployment of Uniswap v3 contracts over the Polygon PoS Chain. The approval comes in the form of an on-chain vote that saw the participation of over 72.6 million users from the community. Uniswap Labs announced to deploy Uniswap v3 contracts based on the votes that reflected over 99.3% approval consensus and will be supported by a $20 million fund — $15 million for long-term liquidity mining campaign and $5 million for the overall adoption of Uniswap on Polygon (MATIC). The Uniswap community has voted to deploy v3 on @0xPolygon through …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability, and governance. This series is focused on the consensus algorithm: part one is about proof-of-work, part two is about proof-of-stake and part three is about proof-of-burn. In this article, I want to leverage my unique perspective …

Ethereum (ETH) developers have put out a call to the community to help test the long awaited Merge between the Ethereum Mainnet and the proof-of-stake (PoS) based Beacon Chain. The Merge is a major milestone towards the transition to Eth2 as it will see the Ethereum network become a PoS blockchain, decreasing its energy consumption by 99%. On Nov. 29 Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden announced a new program to get the community involved in Merge testing that caters to three tiers: non-technical users, developers with limited experience in blockchain and highly technical and experienced blockchain developers. Testing is …

Real-world use cases are one of the main adoption drivers for every crypto ecosystem, which also holds true for the Bitcoin (BTC) network. In the next seven days, the Bitcoin protocol will undergo a soft fork in the name of Taproot upgrade, which aims to improve the network’s privacy, efficiency and smart contracts capability. Taproot is Bitcoin’s first major upgrade since August 2017, which saw the introduction of Segregated Witness (SegWit) and resulted in the launch of Lightning Network. While the previous fork primarily sought to fix transaction malleability and improve Bitcoin’s network scalability, the Taproot upgrade aims to revamp …

A crypto project is vowing to transform the gaming landscape with the help of a brand-new consensus mechanism. Ulti Arena says that proof-of-gaming means that players can earn rewards as they rack up experience on a range of immersive titles. The startup is building a dedicated game client that provides in-depth analytics on a player’s movement, speed and reaction times — enabling them to build on their skills. Better still, Ulti Arena says that it will support some of the most popular games in the industry right now, including Dota 2 and LOL. Its ecosystem is boosted further by an …

At a conference yesterday, Ethereum co-founder and unofficial figurehead Vitalik Buterin argued that Ethereum’s upcoming transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism is a “solution” to the blockchain’s rampant energy consumption that has been incensing critics as of late. In an interview at the StartmeupHK virtual conference hosted from Hong Kong, Buterin said that while proof of stake is “still in its infancy and less battle-tested” than Ethereum’s current proof-of-work model, it can ultimately reduce the chain’s energy consumption by upwards of 10,000x. The comments come amid a period of rampant criticism of blockchain technology for its ecological impact — including …

Republican Rep. Tom Emmer has called for more precise tax guidelines regarding cryptocurrency earnings, after a report he commissioned from the Law Library of Congress showed a stark disparity between regulatory approaches taken by various tax authorities around the world. The 128-page study examines cryptocurrency tax laws in 31 nations, paying particular interest to their applications concerning coins and tokens earned through mining and staking. As the report notes, many countries have already established specific rules for coins earned through mining, but only five have laid down any guidance for would-be stakers. Of the 31 jurisdictions included in the study, …

Researchers from the University of Bern have released a report claiming Ripple’s consensus protocol “ensures neither safety nor liveness.” In a blog posted yesterday from the university’s Cryptology and Data Security Research Group, researchers Christian Cachin, Amores-Sesar, and Jovana Mićić released an analysis alleging the payment firm’s consensus protocol could allow users to potentially “double-spend a token” and halt the processing of transactions. The trio set up examples of the Ripple protocol using different numbers and types of nodes to illustrate possible violations of safety and liveness (a term for the network continuing to process transactions and makes progress). According …

A Ph.D. dissertation On Scalability of Blockchain Technologies has become the most downloaded dissertation at Cornell University in the past eight years. The paper was penned by Adem Efe Gencer in 2017, under the direction of computer scientists Emin Gün Sirer and Robbert van Renesse. When the university asked Sirer about the paper, he praised the work: “Dr. Gencer's thesis represents a tour de force in the burgeoning area of blockchains and cryptocurrencies. It unveiled a brand new consensus protocol, improving upon Satoshi Nakamoto's highly successful protocol that powers Bitcoin.” He also believes that the timing could not have been …