Pennsylvania State University, a U.S. university touting more than 100,000 students, has agreed to operate as a signing node for GoChain's proof-of-reputation, or PoR, blockchain. Constructed as a fork of the Ethereum blockchain's code, GoChain is secured by selected entities that run their own nodes, Marie Gonzalez, GoChain's senior vice president of marketing, told Cointelegraph. GoChain's blockchain uses a consensus mechanism called PoR, which calls on a set number of approved signing nodes to help run the network. The blockchain aims to eventually function with 50 of these nodes. "We set the bar high so it'll take time to get …

Polkadot (DOT) validator Web3Italy has been “slashed” and “chilled” after going offline for 14 hours on Aug. 10 and 11. This means that the validator has lost their staked tokens and been temporarily kicked from the network, respectively. Web3Italy went offline at the same time that numerous other Web3 Foundation validators went offline resulting in the network taking action against the entire group. Web3 Foundation technical educator Bruno Skvorc said the act of being offline alone was not a “slashable offense,” but “being offline with a bunch of others is,” adding: “This validator was offline when a bigger set of …

An update in the OpenEthereum client, the community successor of the Parity client for Ethereum, made the nodes running on the new version essentially useless. The bug appears to have been introduced in the 2.7.2 version of OpenEthereum, upon which the subsequent 3.0 update was based as well. Though the 2.7 release was marked as stable, since June the community started reporting about the client occasionally freezing, which required a manual hard restart for the node. The issue appears randomly “one or three times a month,” and the software fails to notify of its malfunction. Some users have decreed the …

Research into stateless clients for Ethereum is seen as instrumental for the long-term health of the network, but despite all the progress, some fundamental limitations prevent them from being applied in practice for now. At the Unitize conference, Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, provided an up-to-date picture on the latest progress and problems for the stateless client transition. Stateless clients, in short, are a way to allow nodes to fully participate in validation without having to hold the entire earlier history of the blockchain. The state represents all current balances, smart contracts code and their respective data. Each new …

The Nxt (NXT) and Ardor (ARDR) blockchains have seen a spike in the number of network’s nodes after rolling out an incentives program. Jelurida — the company behind both blockchains — told Cointelegraph on April 28 that both networks experienced a dramatic increase in the number of nodes after the firm launched a node rewards program on April Fool’s Day. The node rewards program compensates node hosters with Ignis (IGNIS) tokens. Jelurida intends to distribute 10,000 tokens (about $212) daily among node hosters every day for the next six months. Incentivization worked “beyond expectations” According to the data provided, the …

Major Ethereum browser extension and wallet service Metamask has something to celebrate as 2020 kicks off, notifying its users that Google has now reversed its short-lived ban on the browser add-on. In a tweet posted on Jan. 1 2020, the MetaMask team revealed that: “Upon careful consideration, Google has permitted The MetaMask mobile app back on the Google Play (Android) store! Thanks to all the believers in an open web for speaking out in our support!” Google mistook MetaMask for a mining app MetaMask is a browser extension for Google Chrome that includes a built-in crypto wallet enabling to run …

Algorand, a decentralized blockchain network developed by the eponymous American blockchain firm, is expected to upgrade to version 2.0.2 today. The upcoming network upgrade is poised to increase the amount of time for nodes to upgrade to new consensus versions after voting thresholds have been met, as announced on Dec. 13. Scheduled for 10:00 AM ET on Dec. 16, Algorand v2.0.2 release is expected to take place at block 3,705,466. At press time, there are 3,704,219 blocks on the Algorand blockchain, according to AlgoExplorer.io. Extending time for nodes to upgrade from 12 hours to seven days As announced, the primary …

Bitcoin (BTC) node synchronization would be impossible if it were not for the improvements that have been made to the software, according to the research arm of crypto exchange BitMex. BitMex Research measured the Initial Block Download (IBD) times of Bitcoin Core software releases from 2012 to 2019 needed to download the blockchain and verify it and shared their conclusions in a blog post published on Nov. 29. The research team claims that the older version of the Bitcoin Core software may be impossible to synchronize now and that the scalability improvements made to the software are essential to the …

New York-based crypto custody startup Casa has released Casa Node 2, a new iteration of the industry’s popular pre-synced Bitcoin (BTC) full node product. Original Casa Node did a great job, the firm says According to an Oct. 8 blog post, Casa Node 2 offers a faster and smoother Bitcoin and Lightning experience by deploying a faster processor on Raspberry Pi 4, with 4GB RAM and a 1TB solid state drive. In the announcement, Casa stated that their original Casa node did a great job as a full Bitcoin and Lightning node in a reliable device. However, the company “wanted …

Steemit, a blogging and social networking website that uses its Steem blockchain-based rewards platform for publishers, took to Twitter today to announce to their fellow-Steemians that Steemit is back up and running and fully functional after having suffered from a bug in the curations reward curve. Bug in the curations reward curve According to a blog post from Sept. 3, Steemit is now fully operational again, as are all Steem applications leveraging their API. The chain halted over the weekend due to a bug in the curations reward curve, which was apparently unrelated to the previous halt or the so-called …

On Aug. 16, Litecoin (LTC) founder Charlie Lee disclosed in a tweet that he is “an investor in Casa,” a Bitcoin (BTC) personal key security firm. He also noted that he has high hopes for the company: “I have the same feeling about Casa today as I had about Coinbase when I joined in 2013 as the 3rd hire. Casa is making Bitcoin easy to use and that is extremely important for this space. Looking forward to great things!” A notable hire The tweet was posted in response to Casa announcing the hire of a former engineer and product developer …

Audius, a blockchain startup that aims to disrupt the music streaming industry, has uploaded its public beta version. The open source code for public use of Audius is available on GitHub as of Aug. 15. Additionally, the startup has issued an open invitation to run network nodes in exchange for compound rewards distributed in Audius’ native token. Decrypt reported the startup’s recent developments on Aug. 15. According to Audius CEO Roneil Rumburg, Amazon Web Services is one provider that users can take advantage of to run a node for the music network for staking. Rumburg explained that “every time a …