The Port of Rotterdam's blockchain subsidiary, Blocklab, has been trialing a decentralized electricity trading system to help lower costs and optimize the use of renewables on its microgrid. The system, called Distro, has been jointly developed by Blocklab and S&P Global Platts and has been operational as a trial for two months. Distro uses blockchain technology, smart contracts and artificial intelligence to support the decentralized, high-frequency trading of renewable energy by commercial consumers looking to optimize and manage their energy use. It matches demand with the intermittent power generated from different sources, specifically solar and battery storage. Each market participant …

Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican congressperson from Arizona, has referred a new bill to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that, if passed, would recognize digital signatures on the blockchain as enforceable by law. This is particularly important for the enforceability of smart contracts, which automate transactions or other contractual obligations according to binding, pre-specified rules. Smart-contract advocates have long used the adage "Code is law," and the new bill, if approved, could make this a statutory reality. According to public records, the bill was referred to the committee on Friday. A summary of the bill, H.R. 8524, outlines …

High gas prices have become a problem for non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, especially as they look to mint at scale, the founder of a start-up said. Sean Papanikolas, founder of NFT marketplace Cargo, told Cointelegraph in an interview that the NFT sector is at an inflection point. But scalability weighs on new players in the sector now that gas prices have spiked. He said: "Now, in 2020, platforms are starting to see the scaling issue now due to the spikes in gas prices. Some platforms have halted minting while gas is high and other platforms see a major decline in …

The Polkadot team released on Wednesday a major milestone for its Substrate blockchain framework, which now provides a way for blockchain applications to interface with the outside world without relying on external oracle providers. Substrate is the name used for Polkadot’s blockchain building framework. It provides developers with a variety of tools to design their custom blockchain for a variety of possible applications. The blockchains can then be launched stand-alone or integrated in Polkadot’s network of shards, or “Parachains.” The most important feature of Substrate 2.0 is the “off-chain worker,” a development module that lets blockchains perform advanced computations or …

Avalanche, a new blockchain protocol and cryptocurrency backed by Cornell University’s Emin Gün Sirer, will finally go live in a few days. According to an announcement, Avalanche will roll out the full mainnet on Monday. With the mainnet launch, the Avalanche (AVAX) token — the platform's native token — can be listed on crypto exchanges, although Ava Labs did not specify which ones. As previously reported, the AVAX token will serve as a tool to secure the Avalanche network through staking, pay for operational fees, transfer value peer-to-peer and create new networks. Once the mainnet goes live, data about the …

A new project says it is delivering the first-ever public oracle system on the TRON network, enabling real-world data to be injected into smart contracts. According to the team behind the Bridge oracle, the lack of this infrastructure is currently a pain point as it limits the blockchain’s use case to a tokenization platform. They believe that the creation of this system is crucial for attracting small businesses who may not have the means, ability or time to create their own dedicated oracles. This could help the Tron (TRX) network progress and expand in the months and years to come. …

BNP Paribas’ securities arm has partnered with Digital Asset to develop a number of real-time trade and settlement applications using DAML-based smart contracts, the firm announced on Sept. 15. The new DAML-driven apps will connect BNP Paribas Securities Services with major global stock exchanges like the Australian Securities Exchange, or ASX, and the Hong Kong Exchange, or HKEX. The apps will provide market participants in the Asia Pacific with real-time access to ASX’s and HKEX’s upcoming blockchain-based trading and settlement platforms. BNP Paribas will specifically connect to the ASX’s blockchain-powered equity transaction platform known as the Clearing House Electronic Subregister …

The Blockchain Services Network (BSN), the largest blockchain infrastructure initiative in China, now has a unified smart contract programming language. Red Date Technology, a major tech company involved in the BSN's development, will add support for DAML — a smart contract language developed by American blockchain startup Digital Asset. Announcing the news on Sept. 14, the companies’ executives said that DAML will now be the “exclusive standard” for developing decentralized applications, or DApps, on top of the BSN. The integration will enable the interoperability of DApps regardless of the implemented blockchain network. As such, developers will not have to rewrite …

The crypto market has been on the receiving end of a market downturn during the past week, with many cryptocurrencies facing drops in valuation almost overnight, raising concerns that a bear market has commenced. Furthermore, in the wake of this market turmoil, Ethereum network transaction fees have surged, recently achieving an all-time high, thanks in part to the influx of many new on-chain transactions initiated by various decentralized finance protocols that have made their way into the crypto domain in recent months. And while DeFi has provided investors with financial products through decentralized exchanges by way of various lending protocols …

As Russia is set to pilot a blockchain-based e-voting system, the country’s federal elections authority has provided public access to the platform’s source code. According to an official announcement by Russia’s Central Election Commission, or CEC, the source code for the e-voting system was partly released on GitHub on Sept. 7. The initial release included the source code for smart contracts and front-end elements of the e-voting platform like developer libraries and servers responsible for the vote count. According to the CEC, the internal elements of the e-voting platform are expected to be published on Sept. 10. At the time …

Two crypto enthusiasts just made a $10,000 Bitcoin bet on the next US president using a smart contract. According to a Sept. 8 post from podcaster Marty Bent, the Bitcoin (BTC) mainnet has seen its first ever discreet log contract (DLC), which he calls "a very important moment in Bitcoin history". Fitting in with the general theme of 2020, the smart contract is highly political. Nicolas Dorier, a man who claimed to have made BitPay obsolete as a developer of BTCPay, made a bet using a DLC about the next winner of the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States: …

An open-source blockchain specializing in digital identity and data has held a live ask-me-anything session with Cointelegraph. Erick Pinos, Ontology’s Americas ecosystem lead, said the company is constantly making upgrades to its protocol — meaning big improvements have been made since it was initially released in 2017. “Our virtual machine can handle a lot more complex transactions at the same time — and a lot more complexity in what developers can build,” Pinos noted. “We’ve always been making improvements to the core protocol, but we’re also focused a lot on smart contracts and tools that are built on top of …