Privacy-focused cryptocurrency Grin has completed the first hardfork so far on its mainnet. The fork occurred at block height 262,080 on July 17, as shown on the Grin block explorer Blockscan. According to an official announcement from Grin core dev Quentin Le Sceller, the latest blockchain hardfork is designed to discourage Grin mining through dedicated application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and also includes a new iteration of its bulletproof rewind scheme for Grin wallets. As previously discussed by Cuckoo Cycle author John Tromp, there is reportedly no sign of users deploying ASICs to mine Grin yet; however, Grin’s secondary Proof-of-Work …

Napster creator Shawn Fanning’s new company Helium has released its internet of things (IoT) wireless hotspot devices with a blockchain-based incentives program, according to an official blog post by Helium on June 12. According to the post, a Helium Hotspot provides wireless connectivity to the Internet; one node on its own will cover about 1/50 to 1/150 of a city, according to the company’s research. The nodes are intended to support a network of internet coverage, one which is decentralized and powered by individual contributors. Contributors are rewarded by an incentives program on the Helium blockchain, which is powered by …

Fundstrat Global Advisors co-founder Tom Lee has claimed that the crypto winter is over in a tweet on May 19. In the message, Lee said last week’s Consensus conference in New York City was the latest of 13 signs indicating that the industry is recovering after a tough few months. His timeline of events documenting the turnaround dates back to November 2018, when a bitcoin cash (BCH) hard fork battle exhausted the bitcoin (BTC) supply held by two rival mining pools. Other significant milestones listed by Lee include Jan. 23 of this year, when on-chain transactions turned positive year-on-year for …

During an on-stage discussion at Consensus, Brian Armstrong, CEO of major United States cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, said that its custody service has already received $1 billion in crypto under management. Coindesk reported on Armstrong’s comments on Wednesday, May 15. Panel moderator and Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Vigna asked Armstrong about the perspectives of institutional investments in the crypto industry. In response, the Coinbase CEO provided an example of his own company, noting that Coinbase Custody managed to get $1 billion in assets under management in just 12 months after its launch. He also mentioned that 70 institutions signed up …

EBay has denied rumors that it is going to start accepting cryptocurrency as a payment method, according to a Bloomberg report on May 14. Speculation has been mounting since the e-commerce giant took out ads at the Consensus conference in New York City. One of the billboards said: “Virtual Currency. It’s happening on eBay.” It has been suggested that this week’s surge in crypto prices, which has happened without explanation, was linked to hopes that eBay was preparing to embrace crypto. Given how the online auction site bills itself as “the world’s largest marketplace,” such a move would have been …

A Pfizer executive has challenged existing theories about slow rates of blockchain adoption — telling the Consensus conference on May 14 that the technology is “basically good enough to have more production blockchains than we have today.” Ken Nessel, senior director of business technology at the pharmaceutical giant, made his comments during the second day of the conference in New York City. He joined AstraZeneca’s Kate Gofman for an event called From Bench to Bedside: Blockchains and the Future of Clinical Research. When asked for an honest assessment about what is holding the blockchain industry back, Nessel said: “I think …

United Kingdom-based blockchain infrastructure provider Parity has launched a beta version of Substrate, its tool for creating customized blockchains, according to a press release published Tuesday, Dec. 18. The release states that Substrate is designed to provide “maximum technical freedom” while creating blockchains. It supports multiple programming languages, users can make their own consensus mechanisms, and it is compatible with most existing consensus algorithms. Parity is also going to add more consensus mechanisms in subsequent releases, making them hot-swappable and allowing users to switch between different mechanisms without a hard fork. The beta version of Substrate is licensed under the …

Ethereum (ETH) core developers have agreed to launch the long-awaited Constantinople hard fork at block 7,080,000, as decided in a bi-weekly developers meeting on Friday, Dec. 7. The new agreement follows the previous decision to delay Constantinople fork for late January 2019 due to a “consensus issue” that occurred during the upgrade trial on Ropsten testnet in October. Given the press-time ETH block time of 14.3 sec, and the number of remaining blocks of around 234,431, the Constantinople upgrade is likely to become active in around 38 days from press time, or around Jan. 14, 2019, according to the data …

“Big Four” audit and consulting firm Deloitte has outlined five basic areas of development for blockchain technology in order achieve widespread adoption, according to a study published September 28. According to Deloitte, in order to be adopted by enterprises on a mass scale, blockchain technology should overcome five major obstacles – the possibility of time-consuming operations, lack of standardization, high costs and complexity blockchain applications, regulatory uncertainty, as well as the absence of collaboration between blockchain-related firms. Identifying the area that needs the most development, Deloitte singled out the problem of possible operational delays on a distributed ledger network. The …

Co-founder and head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, Thomas Lee has admitted that his prediction of a Bitcoin rally after the Consensus conference was wrong. Lee has claimed that the crypto market still “faces significant internal resistance and hurdles within traditional financial institutions,” Bloomberg reports May 18 Having accurately predicted the growth of crypto markets after the US tax day in April, Tom Lee made another Bitcoin prediction on May 7, saying that the cryptocurrency will rally during and after the Consensus conference takes place in New York May 14-16. “We expect BTC and cryptocurrencies to behave similarly to …