Cryptocurrency investor and Placeholder partner Chris Burniske has argued that Ether (ETH) is enduring its first mainstream bear market, just as Bitcoin (BTC) did back in 2014-15. In a tweet posted on Aug. 20, Burniske noted that in retrospect, 2014-15 revealed itself as having been the best risk/reward period for investors to get Bitcoin exposure. He added: “To objective observers, the network’s momentum was clear despite the bearish price action; those predisposed to dislike based on perceived vested interests, were blinded by biases & missed the bus. What happened to $BTC then is happening to $ETH now.” Ether price chart, …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says the Ethereum blockchain is almost full. In an interview with The Star published Aug. 19, he said the hurdle that faces big organizations interested in the Ethereum ecosystem is the still-thorny matter of the blockchain’s scalability. “Scalability is a big bottleneck” Buterin’s stark comments were made as part of a discussion of what he perceives to be the biggest roadblocks to the widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies. He conceded that: “Scalability is a big bottleneck because the Ethereum blockchain is almost full. If you’re a bigger organization, the calculus is that if we join, it will …

Blockchain-based decentralized application platform (DApps) Tron (TRX) has announced the release of a sidechain scaling solution, the Sun Network, in a blog post published on Aug. 11. Tron has released the V1.0 code for the Sun Network, which is a scaling solution designed to enhance and ensure a supposedly unlimited scaling capacity of the Tron mainnet. This will purportedly let DApps consume less energy and run with higher security and efficiency on Tron. The post further reads that the Sun Network supports smart contract transactions and more customizable requirements such as setting sidechain incentives, transaction rates and confirmation speed, among …

The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA) is setting up a technical group working on collaboration between the mainnet and enterprises. The working group, called the EEA Mainnet Initiative, intends to accelerate and lead cooperation between the EEA’s enterprise and startup members, as well as those who work on the mainnet’s technology and interoperability solutions, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Aug. 6. EEA Mainnet Initiative to work on interoperability and scalability solutions The Mainnet Initiative will seek to improve its knowledge about how public network components match the commercial market requirements needed to boost adoption of Ethereum, the …

Blockchain platform Tron’s founder, Justin Sun, announced that the first version of the Tron (TRX) scalability solution called “Sun Network” will be released on Aug. 10, in a tweet published on Aug. 4. 100x scalability for the Tron blockchain In his tweet, Sun claimed that the first version of the network will allow for 100x scalability and the building of decentralized applications on sidechains. According to the Sun Network’s official website — to which Sun’s tweet linked — the new sidechain system will feature free transactions, 100 times lower fees, decentralized application (DApp) support and faster transaction confirmation. Furthermore, the …

The development team behind proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain Solana received $20 Million in funding, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on July 30. Solana claims to be first web-scaled blockchain Per the release, the funding round was led by Multicoin Capital, with participation from Distributed Global, Blocktower Capital, Foundation Capital and Blockchange VC, among several other companies. Solana claims that the platform is the first web-scale blockchain, since they believe it to be the first solution capable of hosting applications with computational bandwidth akin to the modern internet. Per the press release, the Solana network can support 50,000 transactions …

Ethereum currently is known as the most popular public blockchain network for the development of decentralized applications (DApps) and smart contracts. Its prospective blockchain protocol is one of the few cryptocurrency projects actually achieving real-world adoption, with dozens of applications that can be divided into 11 major categories: open finance, decentralized exchanges, gaming, collectibles, marketplaces, developer tools, identity, governance, infrastructure, token-curated registries and Ethereum Request for Comments (ERC) token standards. Thus, it appears to be leading the field of enterprise blockchain solutions. Ethereum is contributing to the revolutionizing of the internet with the creation of the Decentralized Web — or …

The Ethereum (ETH) team is actively looking for solutions that may help scale the blockchain network, as reported by Cointelegraph on July 15. Co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin is now considering third-party blockchains that have lower commission rates for transferring information. According to him, the Bitcoin Cash (BCH) blockchain could cope well with this task. The fact is that BCH has a high data throughput — 53 kilobytes per second (KPS) compared to Ethereum’s eight KPS, which are actively used by applications, Buterin revealed. Scalability issues force the hand Over the years, scalability has been the Achilles' heel of Ethereum, …

Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network nodes have claimed 2.2 BTC in “justice transactions” to deter potential thieves, a BitMex Research analysis revealed on July 15. A so-dubbed “justice transaction” is a punitive mechanism involving the closure of a lightning channel that is suspected to be attempting theft. As the report outlines: “[B]y design, when a thief attempts to steal funds on the lightning network, if caught, they do not only lose the money they tried to steal, they lose all the funds in the relevant channel. This ‘punishment’ is expected to act as a deterrent and is sometimes called ‘justice’. BitMEX …

Bart Wyatt leads Block.one’s Blockchain Team and is responsible for guiding the development of the company’s strategic vision for EOSIO. Bart came to Block.one as a veteran in the industry with six years dedicated to asset tokenization and decentralized identity. Prior to joining Block.one, Bart oversaw technology teams at several firms that specialized in personal privacy solutions, deniable attestations, and degradable cryptographic proofs, gaming and advertising technology. The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. In the blockchain industry, “scalability” can mean a lot of things. In …

Stuart Popejoy has 15 years experience in building trading systems and exchange backbones for the financial industry. Prior to co-founding Kadena with Will Martino in 2016 and becoming the company's president, Stuart worked at JPMorgan Chase in the new products division, where he led and developed JPMorgan’s main blockchain product, Juno. Stuart also wrote the algorithmic trading scripts for JPMorgan, which informed his creation of Kadena’s simple, purpose-built smart contract language, Pact. The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. IBM is a major player in the …

Bitrefill has made it possible for users of major American crypto exchange and wallet service Coinbase to access its full suite of Lightning Network (LN) services directly from within their native exchange accounts. The news was revealed in an official tweet from Bitrefill on June 25. The capability comes as part of Bitrefill’s new Thor API, which allows multiple platform users to instantly open custom channels on the Lightning Network via Bitrefill’s nodes — whether those platforms offer native support for LN or not. They can also pay Lightning invoices directly from within their Coinbase account. As previously reported, the …