Russian oil firm Gazprom Neft's aviation subsidiary, Gazpromneft-Aero, announced Monday that it has completed a successful pilot of its blockchain-based refueling project, Smart Fuel. The new platform was implemented for more than 100 scheduled flights of Russian budget airline Smartavia, operating at Murmansk's international airport. Alongside Smartavia, the pilot involved major banks VTB and Raiffeisenbank. Dmitry Makarov, head of the Smart Fuel project, told Cointelegraph that the blockchain-based trial in Murmansk ran from September 2020 to December 2020. Following the successful pilot, Gazpromneft-Aero will continue providing its refueling payment solution to Smartavia, Makarov said. Based on the major blockchain framework …

Cardano's Ada received a fresh wave of optimism and buying volume on Feb. 26 that pushed its price to a new all-time high of $1.29, making it the third-ranked cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that Ada surged 27% from a low of $0.98 during the early trading hours on Feb. 26 to its new high at $1.29 on record trading volume. Momentum for the project has been building throughout the month of February following the integration of the Mary upgrade to Cardano’s testnet on Feb. 3. The upgrade enables smart contract functionality, helping transform …

Today, yield aggregator Harvest Finance and multi-service platform Value DeFi — two Ethereum-native decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols accounting for nearly a billion dollars in total value locked between them — announced planned expansions to Binance Smart Chain, the smart contract platform built by crypto exchange giant Binance. Not everyone in the Ethereum community is ready to take BSC seriously, however. Harvest, which is among the largest yield aggregators and currently boasts over 830 million in total value locked, said in a statement to Cointelegraph that the protocol is looking to hire two developers to bring Harvest to BSC. “At Harvest …

A new report suggests that Cosmos, Polkadot and NEAR could fail to take off if they are perceived to have an issue with centralization — as the example of EOS demonstrates. Non-custodial crypto asset exchange ShapeShift has published a report predicting that Proof-of-Stake scalable smart contract networks Polkadot, Cosmos, and Near will be thoroughly put to the test this year. The report forecasts the networks’ claims of increased scalability without sacrificing security or decentralization will soon be tested. Shapeshift notes the distribution of Polkadot’s and NEAR’s respective native tokens appears quite centralized as a result of “relatively high insider token …

The Anon Powered development team has announced today the launch of Premia, the latest decentralized finance (DeFi) options platform live on Ethereum. In an interview with Cointelegraph, the group of semi-anonymous developers behind Anon Powered — who collectively requested that they be referred to as “members of the Premia Republic,” the name for Premia’s forthcoming DAO — said that out of the gate users will be able to write, sell and exercise “American-style covered calls and puts,” which can be exercised prior to the option expiration date. Premia’s launch adds to an increasingly crowded DeFi options marketplace, joining projects such …

Someone sent Mark Cuban a profane Ethereum Name Service domain a few days ago. After observant Twitter users recently tracked down his ether address, it was only a matter of time before a wave of unwanted spam transactions made their way into his account. This is, after all, the internet. Here there be monsters. While it isn’t entirely clear what the presumed troll’s endgame was, the word was nonetheless offensive enough to raise some eyebrows at Cointelegraph, and we don’t intend to reprint it here. Suffice to say, a decent person would not want to be known as the owner …

Layer-two project Cartesi has unveiled a rollup-centric design for its Cartesi Machine, a Linux-based virtual machine that would allow developers to run any type of computing application secured via blockchains. Cartesi’s design uses a slightly modified version of Optimistic Rollups, a layer-two technology developed within the Ethereum ecosystem, to power its virtual machine. In contrast with Optimism’s implementation, which uses this type of rollups primarily to maintain full compatibility with Ethereum smart contracts, Cartesi wants to offer a traditional development environment. The Cartesi virtual machine emulates a RISC-V microprocessor architecture, an open-source alternative to the ARM instruction set commonly used …

SIA, an Italian company specializing in e-payment services, is working on a blockchain-based system to enable secondary credit trading. The upcoming platform will allow banks, funds and financial operators to negotiate secondary credit transactions via blockchain, SIA announced on Tuesday. A spokesperson for SIA told Cointelegraph that the company plans to pilot the platform in the second quarter, while the full-scale launch is expected in the second half of the year. SIA’s new credit trading platform is being developed in collaboration with fintech startup WizKey. The Milan-based firm is building financial solutions with a focus on structured finance products and …

The first Aave-friendly Ethereum to Matic bridge has opened for business, allowing users to port Aave’s interest-bearing aTokens back and forth between the DeFi protocol and the faster, cheaper layer-two network. The smart contract for the bridge was developed by Nick Mudge, Lead Solidity Developer of Aavegotchi. It differs from previous Ethereum to layer-two bridges as it interacts with the Aave protocol to keep track of interest being paid on aTokens locked up on the Ethereum side of the bridge. According to Mudge, the bridge’s smart contract converts user’s Aave aTokens — such as aUSDC, for example — to maTokens, …

Seven weeks after the launch of Ethereum 2.0’s beacon chain and 2.25 million ETH has been deposited into the ETH2 contract address, signaling growing confidence in the long-awaited rollout of ETH2. More than 66,360 beacon chain validators have been created as part of Ethereum’s transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. Data provided by smart contract experts at Dune Analytics suggests that more ETH is now being staked by individual contributors than single addresses with large balances, which had dominated flows to the Eth2 contract throughout December and the first half of January. my takeaway: the combination of …

Retail investors in the U.S. will now be able to trade a SEC-qualified token offering for the first time. Following the launch of the Stacks 2.0 mainnet, OKCoin has announced that it has listed the Stacks token (STX.) Stacks, formerly known as Blockstack, shares a native connection with the Bitcoin network. As reported by Cointelegraph, the layer-one blockchain has an ambitious vision to bring smart contracts and decentralized finance to BTC — enabling developers to build cutting-edge applications and explore new use cases. America is not the only market where STX can be purchased and traded on OKCoin, as this …

Stacks, an open-source network for building smart-contract and DeFi bridges to Bitcoin (BTC), has secured several major partnerships in the wake of its mainnet launch — sending a strong signal that industry players are keen to back new use cases for BTC. The Stacks 2.0 mainnet officially launched on Thursday, bringing the promise of new use cases for Bitcoin based on the Clarity smart contract language. As Cointelegraph reported, Stacks 2.0 is attempting to broaden Bitcoin’s utility beyond the digital-gold narrative to include decentralized finance and smart contracts. That includes putting to work the roughly $700 billion in Bitcoin capital …