Cross-chain or blockchain interoperability research could finally be reaping results, with multiple projects launching interoperability protocols this week. Ontology (ONT), Neo (NEO) and Switcheo have collaborated to launch the “heterogeneous interoperability protocol alliance” Poly Network, while the NEAR project has launched the Rainbow Bridge, connecting NEAR and Ethereum. Blockchains have long been seen as silos of data with no real ability to interact with any other networks. This has forced developers to choose between blockchains based on their existing ecosystem, their scalability or their fees. Ontology co-founder Andy Ji shared that this is one the reasons behind this new development: …

This week Warren Buffett made waves throughout financial media as reports that Berkshire Hathaway sold several bank stocks and purchased shares in Barrick Gold were made public thanks to the company’s latest quarterly shareholder filing. This purchase is significant because Buffet has been a strong critic of gold, however, in the current economic conditions, he appears to have changed his view and sought safety in the asset. Bitcoin advocate Max Kaiser believes that several fund managers are now likely to increase their allocation to gold, which could boost its price to $5,000. Kaiser also expects institutional money to flow into …

At various points throughout 2020 Bitcoin (BTC) was correlated with gold. During these phases BTC was acting as an uncorrelated asset, but now it has become highly correlated to the S&P 500. This suggests that the top-ranked cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap has been finding acceptance among various groups of traditional investors during different stages of the current coronavirus pandemic induced economic crisis. Crypto market data daily view. Source: Coin360 Bitcoin’s volatility has dropped in the past few days but select altcoins have been rallying sharply, prompting analysts to predict that a new altcoin season has arrived. If Bitcoin shakes out from …

Alternative cryptocurrencies, or altcoins, have started to record large gains across the board. Some small-cap coins have seen triple-digit percentage gains in recent weeks. But several larger-cap cryptocurrencies have also been posting serious gains such as VeChain (VET), Stellar (XLM), Cardano (ADA) and Chainlink (LINK). Cryptocurrency market performance in the past 7 days. Source: Coin360 Top ten top performers in the crypto market in the past week In the past week, VET, XLM, ADA, ALGO, LINK, BSV, ATOM, XRP, CRO and ETC outperformed the rest of the market including Bitcoin, which gained just 1.13% during the period. The chart below …

In a special announcement made at the Unitize conference on July 6, Cosmos, Polkadot, and Terra revealed a new DeFi savings product called Anchor that aims to offer dependable interest rates on stablecoins deposits. The companies involved in the creation of Anchor plan to launch it across their respective blockchains at the end of Q3 this year and scale across to other PoS blockchains in the future. Do Kwon, founder and CEO of Terra, explained in a prepared statement: “While DeFi staples such as Maker and Compound have been revolutionary in creating fully decentralized crypto money markets, the volatility of …

Decentralized data network Bluzelle (BLZ) discovered a bug in the Tendermint consensus algorithm used by the Cosmos (ATOM) interchain protocol. According to a Bluzelle announcement shared with Cointelegraph on July 6, the firm discovered a bug in Tendermint during its validators competition. The competition, which involved 220 participants maintaining a Tendermint-based a testnet, at one point saw the blockchain halt completely due to the bug. The bug was already patched Validators participating in the competition were unable to resume their activities even after the blockchain was restarted. Bluzelle sent an extensive bug report to Cosmos after the incident took place …

The Kava decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol officially launched on the Cosmos (ATOM) network, with an initial onboarding of Binance Coin (BNB) as a collateral form. Kava works in a similar way to MakerDAO (MKR), allowing users to deposit crypto assets and borrow Kava’s stablecoin, USDX. The project focuses on providing interoperability to DeFi, and promises to onboard collateral from other chains including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). The initial collateral form is BNB, which gives Binance’s token a DeFi use case. It is no secret that the exchange sought to introduce its token to DeFi, previously being involved with the …

In the latest figures released by financial rating agency Weiss Crypto Ratings this week, Cardano (ADA), Tezos (XTZ), Cosmos (ATOM) and Fantom (FTM) are the top coins by in the “technology” category, ranking above Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). Released weekly, the rating compares cryptocurrency coins in a number of categories including adoption, risk/reward and technology. The list currently rates 123 coins and tokens with the highest overall rank only hitting a B+. The risk/reward column does not give any coin a rank above D. Rating system The Weiss Crypto Ratings model is built with five basic layers that take …

Interchain decentralized data hosting project Bluzelle (BLZ) announced the launch of its mainnet which aims to combine the advantages of edge computing with distributed ledger technology (DLT). According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on April 9, Bluezelle will host a network stress test dubbed “Swarm of Duty” which will be incentivized with $30,000 worth of tokens for developers, token holders and validators. The company says that this test is “the last step before Bluzelle’s mainnet launches” and is meant to ensure that the network can manage real-world usage. Bluzelle’s team claims that its technology enables decentralized applications (DApps) on …

As cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile, crypto players can’t stop arguing about what really impacts the price of certain coins and what does not. Some crypto pundits believe a larger amount of tokens staked in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains could push the price upwards by reducing the circulating supply, making the remaining tokens more valuable. But blockchain and crypto analytics firm Messari has crunched the numbers and reports that there is little correlation between the two. Announcements correlate with price though In an April 1 blog post, Wilson Withiam, a researcher at the Messari analytics team, provided an analysis of 21 …

The NULS Technical Community (NULS) has released a blueprint for Nerve Network, a cross-chain protocol. Until now, the mysterious mastermind behind the network was known only known as “Berzeck”. Vitalik’s dream come true Nerve Network is tackling the same issue as Cosmos (Atom) and Polkadot — a lack of cross-chain interoperability. This is something that Vitalik Buterin has recently lamented about: “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.” Nerve Network has two layers of super-nodes. …

After numerous big companies exited Facebook’s Libra project and several regulators voiced their concerns, news about the project had taken a back seat. However, this week, the Libra Association announced that E-commerce giant Shopify had joined the network. The Libra Foundation said that Shopify, an online marketplace hosting more than one million merchants, would be an “incredible partner in making widespread economic participation a reality.” Several central banks have said that Libra forced them to consider launching a central bank digital currency (CBDC). While a few nations have initiated pilot projects to experiment with digital currency, others like China have …