As many as 73.5% of Ethereum nodes are now marked as “Merge ready” ahead of the upcoming Bellatrix upgrade for Ethereum on Sept. 6, according to data from Ethernodes. The Bellatrix upgrade is seen as one of the last necessary steps prior to the official Merge, which will see Ethereum transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism between Sept. 10-20. To become Merge ready, Ethereum node operators must comply with the Bellatrix upgrade by updating its consensus layer clients prior to epoch 144896 on the Beacon Chain, which is scheduled to take place on 11:34:47am UTC on Sept. 6, 2022, according …

Just when the Ethereum ecosystem reached its final stages in preparing for the much-anticipated upgrade, The Merge, german cloud provider Hetzner, reiterated its stance against allowing mining operations for both proof-of-stake (PoS) and proof-of-work (PoW) applications. Hetzner, a private, centralized cloud provider, stepped in on a discussion around running blockchain nodes, highlighting its terms of services that prohibit customers from using the services for crypto activities. However, the Ethereum community perceived the revelation as a threat to the ecosystem as Hetzner’s cloud services host nearly 16% of the Ethereum nodes, as shown below. In crypto, the reliance on centralized service …

Ethereum is a few weeks away from officially moving to a proof-of-stake (PoS) mining consensus from its current proof-of-work (PoW) one. The transition officially dubbed the Merge is slated for Sept. 15, but in the run-up to the major upgrade, Ethereum node centralization has become a hot topic. As Cointelegraph reported last week, the majority of 4,653 active Ethereum nodes are being run through centralized web providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), which experts believe could expose the Ethereum blockchain to the central point of failure post Merge. The same concern was put forward by Maggie Love, co-founder of Web3 …

The majority of 4,653 active Ethereum (ETH) nodes are in the hands of centralized web providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), which could “expose Ethereum to central points of failure,” according to crypto analytics platform Messari. An Aug.15 post shows that three major cloud providers account for 69% of hosted nodes on the Ethereum Mainnet, with over 50% of that coming from Amazon Web Services (AWS), over 15% from Hetzner and 4.1% from OVH. Figures from Ethernodes additionally show that Oracle (4.1%), Alibaba (3.9%) and Google (3.5%) also provide web hosting services on Ethereum. While the distribution of cloud service …

Proof-of-stake- (PoS)-based blockchain Celo has been suffering from an on-and-off network outage lasting 24 hours, though the blockchain appears to be up and running again. Celo is an open-source blockchain that enables users with phone numbers to make payments with crypto by using their phone numbers as a proxy for public keys. Celo updated its Twitter followers after the network came back online, noting it was the network’s first outage since the mainnet launch on April 22, 2020, and that it has begun a “thorough and expedited technical analysis” to get to the bottom of the issue. The protocol made …

Decentralized Web3 infrastructure provider Ankr Network (ANKR) has introduced its Ankr Network 2.0 upgrade aimed at transitioning blockchains into more resilient node networks. The upgrade is detailed in the Ankr 2.0 Whitepaper, which was obtained by Cointelegraph ahead of its release later on Thursday. The upgrade centers around making Web3 more decentralized through several new features, such as an option to run an independent node, the ability to stake ANKR tokens on a full node, and the Ankr DAO. A spokesperson explained to Cointelegraph: “The upgrade is aimed at transitioning more blockchains, and the DApps built on them, to more …

A Bitcoiner in Brazil has beamed the blockchain from space. Alessandro Cecere, product manager at Ledn and a Venezuelan national, has established the purported first Bitcoin (BTC) satellite full node in Brazil. The full satellite node that Cecere has established downloads the Bitcoin blockchain directly from the Blockstream Satellite Network, negating the need for a reliable internet connection. It’s a small step for Bitcoin’s web of nodes but a giant leap for Bitcoin adoption, evincing that those in remote or hard-to-reach areas could run nodes. A refresher for those new to nodes: A Bitcoin full node is software that continuously …

What are the various Lightning Network problems? Routing fees, channels being fraudulently closed, the exposure of nodes to online theft and malicious attacks are a few problems with the Lightning Network. Routing fees are among the vital Lightning Network problems that are required to transfer payments between channels. However, nodes do not get any reward in return for facilitating payments. Also, fraudulent channel closure, which means one party closes the channel without notifying the other party, leading to offline transaction risk is another issue with the LN. To transmit and receive payments on Bitcoin's Lightning Network, nodes must always be …

The digital financial environment continues to develop almost every second, which is no surprise to those in the crypto sector. Among such technological advancements, a new project called StrongBlock has popularized the concept of the node as a service (NaaS) on the blockchain. NaaS is an alternative to running entire blockchain nodes on your own; it provides developer infrastructure and tools for setting up and managing blockchain nodes. Connected blockchain nodes relay, transmit and store decentralized blockchain data. But, what is a blockchain node? A node, also known as a Full Node, is a device that stores the blockchain's whole …

Ankr, one of the industry’s fastest RPC providers and web3 developer toolsets, has announced that it will become a remote procedure call provider for Optimism. Optimism is an open-source layer-2 scaling solution for Ethereum that focuses on speed and efficient transactions across the network. It has caught the eyes of many in recent months, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. This is a great example of why I'm so proud of @optimismPBC for adding non-token governance (the Citizen House). Optimism explicitly has goals *other* than just "make OP go up", and the only way to do that long-term is with explicit …

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 …

On Wednesday, LayerZero Labs, a firm that develops protocol to enable omnichain decentralized applications, or dApps, to span multiple blockchains, announced that it raised $135 million in its latest funding round. The deal values LayerZero Labs at $1 billion and will accelerate the development of its namesake protocol. The round was led by notable venture groups and investors such as Sequoia Capital, FTX Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and with participation from Coinbase Ventures, PayPal Ventures, Tiger Global, Uniswap Labs, and more. It aims to unite applications such as gaming, nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, marketplaces, media apps, etc., so they are operable …