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 …

Ethereum has been the center of focus in the cryptosphere for some time now, and for good reasons. As the popularity of the second-largest blockchain network continues to grow, so too does the urgency for improved performance and scalability. The Ethereum network has been dealing with some congestion issues, the most recent of which resulted in its transaction fees ballooning in June 2020. The network congestion even led to an increase in the maximum gas allowed per block on the Ethereum blockchain, enabling more transactions to be processed but also meaning that the size of the blockchain continues to grow …

As Bitcoin (BTC) continues to pick up mainstream traction, the asset's blockchain scalability remains an issue, according to Decred co-founder Jake Yocom-Piatt. "There is enough demand for on-chain Bitcoin transactions during peak demand times to completely fill blocks and drive fee rates up substantially," Yocom-Piatt told Cointelegraph, noting the struggles Bitcoin's network may face during times of increased activity, given the number of interested parties. Bitcoin scaling has been an issue for years When it comes to mass adoption, Bitcoin's ability to work effectively under high traffic conditions has been in question for a number of years. The debate caused …

As the world awaits Ethereum (ETH) 2.0 staking implementation, someone operating under the pseudonym "heyheeyheeey" posted a Medium article with a solution based on the protocol. The concept is a "design for an ETH2 staking solution on top of Argent, that is fast and simple to use so that users with less time, knowledge or skills can join from the beginning," the author wrote on June 2. Argent is a crypto wallet solution with elements of decentralized finance, or DeFi compatibility. ETH 2.0 is on its way A big topic of discussion in 2020 so far, Ethereum 2.0 is essentially …

As part of a blog post detailing a different approach to blockchain transaction scaling, Waves Smart Contracts head of development, Ilya Smagin, noted the blockchain space often makes excuses for its shortcomings. "One of the things blockchain people are good at is explaining why user restrictions and inconveniences are insignificant and are actually the solutions rather than the problems," Smagin said in a June 4 post. Blockchain is still a young industry Although some of the underpinnings and inspiration for blockchain tech came into play in years prior, the technology gained true ground with the inception of Bitcoin's white paper …

Continuing congestion on the Ethereum (ETH) network has led some developers and community members to call for increasing the gas limit, which defines its transaction throughput. Data from Etherscan shows that the average gas price rose more than three-fold since early May, with an average of about 30 Gwei in the last few days. Source: Etherscan.io According to EthGasStation, this results in an average of a $0.16 fee to send a simple ETH transaction, which uses the least gas possible. ERC-20 token transfers and smart contract calls can cost many times as much. The fee increase is already having a …

Uri Kolodny, co-founder and CEO of blockchain firm StarkWare, told Cointelegraph that Ethereum second-layer scalability solutions still need some work. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin claimed on June 1 that the blockchain’s layer-two scaling initial deployment has “basically” succeeded. Kolodny — on the other hand — told Cointelegraph that he is not as convinced: “I wouldn't pop the champagne bottles just yet, as many of these proposed solutions have at this point been deployed only on Twitter, not on Ethereum Mainnet.” Kolodny admitted that there are many promising developments when it comes to second-layer Ethereum scalability solutions. He explained that “there …

Blockchain firm Elrond has invited hackers to attack its network during its upcoming incentivized stress test. According to an announcement on Tuesday, the upcoming Elrond incentivized stress test will include a variety of different attacks on the network. Elrond's CEO, Beniamin Mincu, explained to Cointelegraph: "Anything that takes the network down is allowed, as long as it's not breaking the law or social privacy of participants. So DDoS-ing, hijacking rewards, stealing coins, double spending, minting new coins & other similar situations - we will reward every successful attempt to do any of those things.” A blockchain transformed into a cyber …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said that the blockchain’s layer-two scaling initial deployment has “basically” succeeded. In a June 1 tweet, Buterin claimed that most of the initial work on Ethereum’s second-level scalability solutions is nearly complete. To back his claim, Buterin linked to a tweet by Ethereum researcher Philippe Castonguay who listed a number of relevant developments and second-layer Ethereum scalability solutions that have recently launched. Castonguay noted that blockchain development firm StarkWare launched its second-layer scalability solution, as did blockchain company LoopRing. According to StarkWare, their second-layer solution attempts to address both scalability and privacy limitations on the blockchains …

The crypto space is well over a decade old with more than 5,500 different cryptocurrencies and a market capitalization north of $250 billion. Researchers at American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz say the 11-year old industry is in its fourth supercycle with the three previous epochs culminating in distinct developments that have gone on to shape the market as a whole. In a report issued earlier in May, the VC firm posited that despite the apparently chaotic nature of the crypto market, each previous cycle has proceeded in roughly the same order. According to the report, every new stage begins …

The open blockchain platform Harmony announced that it will now support staking in a bid to create a blockchain infrastructure that attains high scalability without compromising on decentralization. In a press release published May 19, 2020, Harmony claimed it is the first to ever integrate staking into a blockchain network also utilizes database partitioning — called sharding — to attain high transaction throughput. Nick White, Harmony co-founder told Cointelegraph: "You will not find another chain that can support the same throughput, same speed of settlement, same extremely low cost, and the same level of decentralization. This puts us in a …

Bitcoin blockchain solution startup, IOV Labs, recently introduced the RIF Lumino Light Client. The new offering "will allow to any DApp or mobile application to take the great advantages of the RIF Lumino Network," an IOV Labs representative told Cointelegraph in an email. But what is the RIF Lumino Network? A second layer payment network on Bitcoin's blockchain IOV Labs manages Rootstock, or RSK, a sidechain on Bitcoin's blockchain, which allows smart contract capabilities on the network. IOV Labs calls RSK a second layer solution on top of Bitcoin's blockchain, which is layer one, the representative clarified. IOV Labs' May …