Hong Kong and Thailand’s central banks have stepped closer to implementing a joint central bank digital currency (CBDC) for cross-border payments. On Jan. 22, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) officially announced the outcomes of a joint CBDC research project called Project Inthanon-LionRock. Alongside publishing a joint press release, the banks have issued a detailed 90-page report providing an exhaustive analysis of the potential risks and benefits of CBDCs for real-time money transfers, liquidity management, regulatory compliance, and other aspects of finance. Inthanon-LionRock project was initiated in May 2019 After the HKMA and the …

JPMorgan’s blockchain spin-off Kadena has fully launched its public blockchain, completing what it calls the “industry’s first hybrid blockchain platform.” Launched on Jan. 15, Kadena’s public blockchain includes full transactions and the ability to write smart contracts, the firm’s CEO co-founder and Will Martino said in a press release shared with Cointelegraph. The company claims the product is the first sharded Proof-of-Work Layer 1 network to make it to market. Kadena’s hybrid blockchain seamlessly integrates a public chain with a private network As the launch completes Kadena’s hybrid blockchain platform, the fully functional hybrid blockchain enables the connection of a …

Blockchain software development firm Block.One released EOS.io 2.0, the software underlying the EOS blockchain. In the release announcement published on Twitter on Jan. 10, Block.One claimed that the update makes the blockchain “faster, simpler, and even more secure.” Major changes to the smart contract virtual machine The official blog post on new software explains that it includes a purpose-built WebAssembly (WASM) engine on which the EOS smart contracts run. According to its official website, WASM is an instruction format designed for deployment on the web and servers. This change is expected to improve the performance of smart contract execution, given …

Smart contract auditing team ChainSecurity partnered with the Swiss branch of Big Four auditing firm PwC to enhance the services the global auditor provides. In an email sent to Cointelegraph, a PwC spokesperson explained that no acquisition took place and multiple ChainSecurity teams joined the firm. Hand in hand According to a press release published by the firm on Jan. 5, PwC hopes that, with ChainSecurity’s team, the firm will become “the world’s leader in smart contract auditing.” PwC Switzerland and Europe head and partner of risk auditing Andreas Eschbach said in an email to Cointelegraph: “As an integral part …

A Jan. 8 post published by the Ethereum Foundation (EF) revealed that developers are working on a new implementation of the Vyper compiler, due to “multiple serious bugs” in the existing version. The Vyperlang team responded by noting that existing Vyper smart contracts were not affected by these bugs. Vyper is an alternative programming language for Ethereum originally conceived by Vitalik Buterin. It focuses on being as human-readable as possible, even at the cost of missing some of the more advanced features found in Solidity, the primary language. While initially part of the main Ethereum (ETH) code stack, it has …

We live in the days of next-generation digital money emergence. Ultimately, the world lacks a clean balance sheet and an asset that has significant appreciation potential to create more loans against it. Euro-backed stablecoins can help boost the crypto-lending sector by providing new ways to put both digital assets and fiat to work. Crypto lending works similarly to traditional lending services, the core difference being that loans are issued on decentralized platforms that lock up cryptocurrencies via smart contracts deployed on public blockchains. And while the up-and-coming decentralized finance sector has grown, with $452 million in funds locked up in …

On Dec. 12, the second-largest health insurance company in the United States announced plans to leverage blockchain technology to secure the medical data of all its 40 million members over the next three years. The most unique quality of a blockchain is that once a piece of information is added to the distributed ledger, it cannot be altered. The information stored on a blockchain is absolutely secure and trustworthy in its entirety. In order for a change to be made in one block, changes must be made to all the subsequent blocks associated to the affected block. Being synonymous with …

Ticketmaster, one of the largest event ticket distributors in the world, announced in October 2018 that it had acquired Upgraded, a blockchain technology company specializing in live event ticketing. By applying blockchain technology, Ticketmaster set out to solve some of the biggest challenges facing the billion-dollar ticketing industry. For example, the company intends to use blockchain to provide event creators with more control and visibility over ticket distribution, while protecting fans against fraudulent tickets. On Dec. 9, Ticketmaster’s vice president of blockchain products and Upgraded’s former CEO, Sandy Khaund, discussed how Ticketmaster is currently leveraging blockchain for use cases that …

British auditing giant EY has released a new iteration of its zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) blockchain, intending to cut transaction costs by 90%. A ZKP is a digital protocol that enables data to be distributed between the two participants without using a password or any associated information in the transaction. According to an announcement on Dec. 19, EY released its third-generation ZKP blockchain technology to the public domain on the Ethereum blockchain. The new ZKP blockchain aims to make private transactions on public blockchains more scalable by decreasing transaction costs by combining multiple private transfers in a single transaction. Specifically, the …

A group of 10 major global oil and gas firms including heavy-hitters like Chevron and Shell has successfully digitized industry balloting using blockchain. The Oil & Gas Blockchain Consortium (OOC) successfully piloted a blockchain-based system for Authorization for Expenditure (AFE) balloting in partnership with Canadian technology provider GuildOne. According to an announcement on Dec. 18, the AFE balloting proof-of-concept (PoC) is the first initiative of its kind and intends to allow participants to send ballots and make elections digitally using blockchain technology. Digitizing conventional paper-based processes As noted in the report, AFEs are used in the oil and gas industry …

Amid news of its recent spat with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, relatively few people have likely heard about Telegram’s Open Network competition that occurred some weeks ago. It was a milestone event that transformed the once-miniscule TON developer community writing in Fift (TON’s general-purpose programming language), which differs greatly from common languages due to its low-level approach. The contest attracted new developers, further built a community around the new platform, and solved existing issues concerning the lack of documentation on smart contracts by providing examples of them and how they are deployed on TON. My team, Button …

Speaking at Elev8CON in Las Vegas on Dec. 9, Ticketmaster’s vice president of blockchain products Sandy Khaund discussed the value smart contracts can bring to the ticketing industry, a market expected to reach over $6.23 billion by 2025. Khaund emphasized the notion that ticket providers should consider treating tickets like smart contracts in order to create scalability, seamless integration with other service providers and extensibility for new revenue opportunities. “Our goal is to support 400–500 million tickets using smart contracts and blockchain technology,” Khaund said on stage. Earlier this year, Ticketmaster announced that it sold 73 million concert tickets, up …