Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance newsletter. It’s been a tumultuous week of doxxing, hacks, bailouts and new highs in the decentralized finance space. Read on to recap the most impactful stories of the last seven days. This article represents a conspectus of the full email newsletter. For the full edition, sign up via the box below. Wonderland lost in no mans amid Sifu saga Following the revelatory identification of previously anonymous QuadrigaCX co-founder Michael Patryn as the founder of DeFi protocol Wonderland — known on social media as @0xSifu — a subsequent community vote decided upon …

Solana (SOL), one of the most active proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains, appears to be a PoS protocol consuming the lowest amount of electricity per transaction, according to a new report. The Crypto Carbon Ratings Institute (CCRI), a research startup focused on the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies, released on Wednesday a new report calculating the electricity consumption and carbon footprint of major PoS blockchains. The CCRI specifically analyzed PoS networks including Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, Algorand and Tezos. According to the CCRI’s findings, the Solana blockchain consumed 0.166 watt-hours (Wh) of electricity per transaction within the study, becoming the most energy-efficient PoS …

The Ethereum Foundation has removed all references to Eth1 and Eth2 in favor of calling the original blockchain the “execution layer” and the upgraded Proof of Stake chain the “consensus layer.” Ethereum’s long-awaited transition from a Proof-of-work mining model to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism is expected to go live around in the second or third quarter of this year. Announcing the change the foundation cited a number of rationales including a “broken mental model for new users,” scam prevention, inclusivity and staking clarity. In a Jan.24 blog post, the Ethereum Foundation noted that the branding of Eth2 failed to …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve, and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability and governance. This series is focused on the consensus algorithm: Part one is about proof-of-work, part two is about proof-of-stake and part three is about proof-of-burn. In the first article in the series, I explored proof-of-work …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability and governance. This series is focused on the consensus algorithm: Part 1 is about proof-of-work, Part 2 is about proof-of-stake and Part 3 is about proof-of-burn. This article is the second in my series about consensus …

Executive Chairman and Co-founder of Ripple Chris Larsen has unveiled his plan for Bitcoin miners to move away from Proof of Work (PoW), saying they should view it as “a net positive for their longevity.” He argues it could provide a major boost to the share prices of listed mining firms “as any new code proposal would almost certainly have to include lucrative incentives to gain their support.” PoW is the consensus algorithm that secures Bitcoin (BTC) transactions on the blockchain. While the Bitcoin network is the most secure and reliable, the amount of energy BTC mining requires causes endless …

In contrast, a transaction on Tezos takes 0.0016 kWh or less than the energy required to charge an Apple Tablet for 10 minutes. 100 Tezos transactions is equivalent to driving 10 km in a Tesla Model 3. The energy use of the entire Tezos network is approximately equivalent to two households in the U.S. for the whole year. One question, though, is how competing blockchains such as Tezos, Polkadot and Solana will perform on the market once Ethereum transitions to Eth2. According to Cointelegraph Research’s original investigation into the most energy-efficient blockchains for nonfungible tokens (NFT), the Ethereum network is …

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind. In previous parts, Andrew Levine of Koinos Group discussed some of the challenges the team has faced since identifying the key issues they intend to solve and outlined three of the “crises” that are holding back blockchain adoption: upgradeability, scalability, and governance. This series is focused on the consensus algorithm: part one is about proof-of-work, part two is about proof-of-stake and part three is about proof-of-burn. In this article, I want to leverage my unique perspective …

Swedish financial watchdog’s call for a European Union-wide ban on proof-of-work (PoW) crypto mining, mainly known as the method of minting new Bitcoin (BTC), has received backlash from crypto-related fund managers. Melanion Capital, a Paris-based alternative investment firm known for its Bitcoin ETF, addressed the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority and Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s call to ban PoW mining across Europe. “The claim that Bitcoin miners jeopardize the electricity network is completely misinformed,” noted Melanion, reminding that Bitcoin miners’ business model is prone to collapse when the electricity demand increases as it would also increase energy prices. The statement points …

Zcash (ZEC) surged by nearly 20% in the past 24 hours, helped by the euphoria surrounding its core protocol's decisive transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). The ZEC price logged an intraday high at $188.80 on Binance after rising two days in a row by more than 27%. The cryptocurrency's move upside also wiped out a big portion of the losses it had faced earlier this week, in the wake of a downside retracement across the crypto market. ZEC price jumped after the cryptocurrency's main developer, Electric Coin Company (ECC), announced that it would move Zcash's protocol from PoW …

The proof-of-work (PoW) consensus model is the mechanism that kicked off the revolution that launched Bitcoin (BTC) in 2009 and it was the model of choice behind many of the popular projects in the early fledgling years of the crypto ecosystem. As time progressed, other consensus models like proof-of-stake (PoS) rose in popularity, especially as the cost of running mining rigs, the constant need to update equipment and environmental concerns led to the PoW model falling out of favor with many. As a result, projects looking to employ a proof-of-work model have had to adapt to stay aligned with the …

Proof-of-work (POW) blockchain networks were all the rage in the early days of cryptocurrency when Bitcoin (BTC) set the standard for security and other projects followed suit in various attempts to offer a robust, scalable network that would either support payments of efficiently transmit data. Most protocols have now shifted to proof-of-stake but Kadena (KDA), a scalable layer-one blockchain protocol is still operating on the old proof-of-work model. According to the project, the network is capable of processing up to 480,000 transactions per second thanks to the use of “braided chains”. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that …