Users of Coinbase Wallet can now back up their private keys on Google Drive or iCloud, according to an official announcement on Feb. 12. In the statement, Coinbase states that allowing users to upload their keys to a cloud provides a safeguard against lost keys, will will help them avoid losing funds should the keys be misplaced. The announcement notes: “The private keys generated and stored on your mobile device are the only way to access your funds on the blockchain. Owners of ‘user-controlled wallets’ like Coinbase Wallet sometimes lose their devices or fail to backup their 12 word recovery …

San Francisco-based blockchain lending firm Dharma Labs has raised $7 million from big investors including Coinbase Ventures, as the company confirmed to Cointelegraph on Feb. 5. According to crypto news outlet The Block Crypto, Dharma Labs is planning to use the raised capital mostly for its Lever product, a platform providing instant margin loans for cryptocurrency traders and high-volume investors. Max Bronstein, head of the Dharma Labs marketing team, reportedly claimed that Lever represents a decentralized smart contract alternative to Genesis Global Trading. Genesis, a Bitcoin (BTC) over-the-counter (OTC) trading firm that was the first New York-based to acquire a …

Bahamian tech company PO8 has developed a project that aims to register data of excavated sunken artifacts on blockchain, according to a press release published on Jan. 29. PO8’s project addresses blockchain as a unique method to boost the local economy by profiting from sunken treasures in the waters surrounding the island country, which is reportedly worth around $100 billion. As estimated by PO8, the project will contribute $60 million a year to the economy of the Bahamas, as well as create more than 100 jobs at peak seasons. The blockchain-based marine project writes that each excavated artifact will be …

Iceland’s blockchain-based identity verification platform Authenteq has raised $5 million in a funding round led by Draper Associates and Capital300, the American tech website VentureBeat reports on Jan. 14. Following the two-week funding round, the company revealed its intention to conduct the second closing of the Series A financing for additional investors in the coming weeks. The latest $5 million closing was held on Jan. 10, while the total amount raised constitutes $7 million over seven rounds since 2015, according to business data provider Crunchbase. Authenteq funding rounds and key investors. Source: Crunchbase Within the latest funding round, Authenteq has …

The United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has proposed an air traffic management blockchain, according to a paper published on the agency’s official website on Jan. 10. The proposed system would employ an open-source permissioned blockchain to enable secure, private and anonymous communication with air traffic services. The document notes: “This framework features certificate authority, smart contract support, and higher-bandwidth communication channels for private information that may be used for secure communication between any specific aircraft and any particular authorized member.” The engineering prototype of the system reportedly employed the Hyperledger Fabric and demonstrated that such infrastructure could …

Timothy C. May, co-founder of the cypherpunk activist movement and author of “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto” has passed away at the age of 67. That information was first shared on Dec. 15 by alleged cypherpunk member Lucky Green via Facebook. According to Green, May had most likely died of natural causes earlier last week at his home in Corralitos, California, although autopsy results are still pending. May is known as the author of “The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto” — published in 1988 — in which he predicted some elements of currently existing decentralized cryptocurrencies. However, the cypherpunk ideologist was not happy …

The Hyperledger Technical Steering Committee has approved the Ursa project, a modular cryptography software library, according to an official announcement Dec. 4. According to the statement, as Hyperledger has matured, projects “have started to find a need for sophisticated cryptographic implementations.” The post describes Ursa as a shift from having each project implementing its own protocols to collaborating on a shared library. Ursa is meant to avoid wasted work on duplicate projects, enhancing security by simplifying analysis and making it “less likely for less experienced people to create their own less secure implementations.” Furthermore, the project is supposed to grant …

E-commerce giant Amazon has won two patents related to methods for protecting the integrity of digital signatures and improving distributed data storage. The two patents were published by by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today, Nov. 13. The first patent document, first filed in April of this year, outlines a “signature delegation” method for “protecting the integrity of digital signatures and encrypted communications,” by allowing for the generation, distribution, validation, and revocation of one-time-use cryptographic keys. In the proposed system, these keys are arranged in what is known in cryptography as a “Merkle Tree” structure, which is a …

On Sept. 17, a vital United States-based content delivery network (CDN) CloudFlare introduced a new decentralized content gateway via InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a peer-to-peer (p2p) network run by thousands of computers bypassing the conventional HTTP system. Here’s how it supposed to work and why CloudFlare decided to support such a project. What is CloudFlare? CloudFlare is a company that provides content delivery network (CDN) services and DDoS protection. Basically, CloudFlare plays the role of an intermediary between the website and the visitor. It defends the website by filtering out suspicious requests and speeds up its overall performance via its …

Major U.S.-based content delivery network (CDN) CloudFlare has introduced a new decentralized content gateway via its InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), the firm announced in a blog post September 17. The announcement was made during Cloudflare Crypto Week, a week devoted to the adoption of new cryptography-powered technologies. Cloudflare’s IPFS Gateway is the first product to be released as a part of Cloudfare’s Distributed Web Gateway project that plans to “encompass all of [its] efforts” to deploy distributed ledger technology (DLT). Cloudflare’s IPFS Gateway service is a method of content access from the IPFS that does not require users to install …

A Nigerian group of experts from various fields of science and technology has teamed up to give a new impulse to the crypto industry in the African country. As the global awareness of Blockchain and it's applications continues to spread, the largest black nation in the world has chosen not to be left behind. Who is a CryptoNigerian? Adeolu Fadele, Founder and President of Cryptography Development Initiative of Nigeria (CDIN), tells Cointelegraph that his dream is for every citizen to become a CryptoNigerian. Fadele defines a CryptoNigerian in this manner: “A CryptoNigerian is a Nigerian that has acquired sufficient knowledge …