Blockchain scalability solution Matic will power a privacy-focused coronavirus tracking mobile application. According to an April 29 announcement, the new app — dubbed Tracy — leverages the Matic network for contact tracing and quarantine management. The solution also uses decentralized data storage solution, MóiBit, to store sensitive data. The application was launched by the firm behind MóiBit, Aicumen. Per the announcement, Tracy is the first blockchain-based solution that was developed for quarantine management and contact tracing. The application is meant to let users understand how likely they are to have come in contact with somebody who tested positive for the …

The total fees paid for on-chain Bitcoin (BTC) transactions over the last 24 hours increased over 50% since yesterday. On-chain data analytics service, Glassnode, pointed out several major developments shown by Bitcoin’s blockchain data. According to the firm, total Bitcoin fees paid over the last 24 hours increased by 50.7% to over $9,500. Furthermore, the Bitcoin mean fee paid by users increased by 58.8%, reaching $0.78. Meni Rosenfeld, the Chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association, told Cointelegraph that he believes 24-hour fees show too short a timeframe to be particularly significant. He pointed out that historic data shows that the …

The Ethereum team has been trying to solve the blockchain scalability problem since 2014. During that time, solutions such as Raiden, Plasma, zk-SNARKs, sharding and rollups appeared in the developers’ tool kit. However, the implementation of some of them was constantly delayed, while others proved to be of limited efficacy. This was the issue until Ethereum’s Istanbul hard fork was implemented in December 2019, which gave hope that the network can finally become suitable for corporate use. Cointelegraph attempted to figure out whether the situation with the second-largest cryptocurrency’s scalability has changed and why not all the solutions have cut …

Another day, another mainnet launch. Or at least, that’s sometimes how it can feel in the blockchain space, as every project seems to be scrambling to be the latest and greatest in balancing the trade-offs between speed, scalability and security. Unfortunately, many of them end up languishing with little development activity and precious few users. Therefore, when a new project comes along that appears to be stirring up genuine excitement among established players and investors in the space, it’s worth taking a second look. Despite being new on the scene and still in the process of developing its testnet, Solana …

Blockchain firm Lightning Labs drafted the specifications of a new Lightning Network-based authentication system that could replace traditional email-based accounts. According to a March 30 announcement, the Lightning Service Authentication Tokens (LSAT) is a new authentication protocol for paid services. The system issues Lightning-based tokens for users after they paid for the service in Bitcoin (BTC) instead of providing their personal information for traditional email-based accounts. The lightning tokens in question act as tickets for the purchased resources and encode what resource it grants access to. The tokens can be exchanged, revoked and modified after being issued. LSAT also reportedly …

On March 25, Cardano launched its off-chain scalability protocol, Ouroboros Hydra, after 5 years of development. An announcement sent to Cointelegraph claims that the protocol vastly increased scalability and low latency for the Cardano blockchain while using little storage on the network’s nodes. The solution also reportedly allows for applications such as micropayments, voting, insurance contracts, and other uses that require low fees or instant transactions. According to a spokesperson of IOHK — the firm behind Cardano — Hydra is the result of a five-year European Union-funded collaborative research project, and could theoretically scale to a million transactions per second. …

A new cryptocurrency ecosystem claiming to be “the world’s lightest blockchain” has ostensibly grown to become one of the largest layer 1 testnets by peer count in the industry. Speaking Cointelegraph on March 24, the developers behind Coda Protocol said that phase three of the network’s testnet launch has now drawn over 400 users — with 300 users signing up to stake, and 143 maximum concurrent users. When compared with data from block explorers for other testnets — as well as anecdotal information from professional validators — Coda claims this peer count already makes it competitive with established testnets such …

Ethereum-based virtual-reality (VR) platform Somnium Space has moved from scalability solution Loom Network to Matic to enhance scaling. On March 23, Somnium Space said that it hopes the transition will allow it to achieve scalability and provide a superior user experience. The firm explained: “By implementing Matic’s high-performance Plasma-based sidechains, Somnium aims to solve any future issues around scalability and user experience such as high-throughput, fast confirmation times, and negligible transaction fees.” A growing VR economy Somnium Space CEO Artur Sychov explained that the firm believes that Matic will allow the economy internal to its VR world to scale significantly …

TSB Games, the firm behind VR game The Sandbox, announced a partnership with second-layer scaling solution Matic. According to a March 19 announcement, Matic will allow the decentralized application (DApp) to carry out faster transactions and create a better user experience. The partnership is also meant to better facilitate decentralized transactions on the platform. As part of the partnership, Matic also participated in Sandobox’s second round of the presale of the virtual LAND represented by non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The land staked by Matic will be used to help introduce the project’s community to NFTs and DApps. The announcement reads: “This …

An Israeli startup Starkware believes it can solve two of the most pressing issues in crypto trading — the inherent vulnerability of centralized exchanges and the low transactional capacity of decentralized ones. The venture was co-founded by professor Eli Ben Sasson, who was a founding scientist for Zcash (ZEC). Besides raising almost $40 million from prominent investors that include Sequoia and Intel Capital, it also received a grant from the Ethereum Foundation. Starkware for exchanges Oren Katz, VP of engineering at Starkware, explained their approach in an exclusive interview to Cointelegraph: “We basically provide a scalability engine for exchanges (or …

Cryptocurrencies could not exist without cryptography. Advances in this field can have far-reaching impacts on blockchain technology and its potential. We will examine the opinions of industry experts on the latest cryptographic advances and their potential for cryptocurrencies. Zero knowledge proofs: more than just privacy Director of research at blockchain firm Blockstream and mathematician Andrew Poelstra told Cointelegraph that zero-knowledge proof (ZK-Proof) systems are “one of the most exciting areas of development” in the cryptography space. This kind of cryptography is known and appreciated for being the basis of privacy-preserving solutions. ZK-Proofs are the basis of the privacy-preserving technology included …

On Feb. 1, part of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain became anonymous. This is all thanks to the Aztec protocol that Thomas Walton-Pock and his team launched on the network’s mainnet last week. Aztec is designed not only to provide a high level of privacy on the ETH blockchain but also, according to its creators, it can significantly reduce transaction costs. Besides, as expected in the nearest time, users will be able to release their assets using the Aztec development toolkit. Under the hood The Aztec protocol is already known in the Ethereum community with the ETH blockchain previously used to …