Latin America’s biggest investment bank, BTG Pactual, plans to shift its security token offerings (STOs), a pipeline of over $1 billion in sales, onto the Tezos blockchain. The announcement appeared in a joint press release published on Tezos Foundation’s website on July 3. The new initiative is a collaboration between BTG Pactual and Dubai-based asset manager Dalma Capital, who plan to tokenize a number of traditional assets using the Tezos blockchain and smart contracts platform. According to the announcement, Dalma Capital is planning to use the Tezos blockchain for digitizing assets in multiple industries, including real estate, equity, lending, as …

Developers can now write smart contracts in C# on Microsoft’s .NET architecture. Blockchain development firm Stratis Group Ltd has launched the first smart contracts on Microsoft's .NET architecture, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on July 3. The company has introduced the Cirrus Sidechain Masternodes and Stratis Smart Contracts products designed to enable businesses to develop smart contracts in the programming language C#, a general-purpose language originally developed by Microsoft within its development platform .NET. This will purportedly allow enterprises to deploy smart contracts on one underlying general-purpose blockchain. The product thus targets enterprises, financial services companies, and …

Global tech giant Intel has co-sponsored a new blockchain programming project by major blockchain tech firm Hyperledger, according to a Forbes report on July 3. Officially released on June 27, Hyperledger Transact is a new tool that aims to boost the compatibility of blockchain networks by providing a standard interface, or a shared software library for smart contracts execution. Michael Reed, Intel's blockchain program director, said in an interview with Forbes that the main purpose of the company's efforts in blockchain development is to ensure that distributed ledger technology solutions “run well on Intel silicon.” Reed noted that the company …

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 …

Major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Pro has added support for Chainlink, according to a blog post on June 26. Coinbase has listed two trading pairs for the token of smart contract platform Chainlink (LINK) on its professional trading platform. LINK will be available to trade with the U.S. dollar (LINK/USD) and with ether (ETH) (LINK/ETH). The post says that the token will be available in all its covered jurisdictions except for the state of New York. According to the announcement, Coinbase Pro will roll out options for LINK in four steps. The four steps are (1) transfer-only, (2) post-only, (3) limit-only, …

Following a recent oracle issue, asset issuance platform Synthetix will reverse the misplaced 37 million synthetic ether (sETH) in exchange for a bug bounty, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick stated on June 25. According to the statement, Synthetix has now resumed trading and transfers after the platform yesterday suffered an oracle error that led to several trades with profits of 1000x, resulting in more than $1 billion in profits in under an hour. Warwick, who is also CEO of Australia-based payment operator blueshyft, has described the details of the accident, noting that the error, which led one of APIs on the …

Update: The article has been corrected to clarify that the funds in question were not ‘lost’ but inflated by an incorrect price feed. The Ethereum-based synthetic asset issuance platform Synthetix has reportedly misplaced over 37 million synthetic ETH (sETH) in an oracle attack, according to a report by The Block on June 24. However, Garth Travers at Synthex told Cointelegraph that "no funds have been 'lost.'” “One bot owner's balance was inflated due to an incorrect sKRW price feed, which he then converted into an inflated amount of sETH.” “We have recovered the sETH and are close to fully resolving …

Web server security service firm Cloudflare announced the launch of its Ethereum gateway in a blog post on June 19. Per the announcement, the gateway — which is part of the company's broader Distributed Web Gateway toolset — lets users “interact with the Ethereum network without installing any additional software.” The system purportedly allows one to access the network and interact with smart contracts through a custom hostname. Furthermore, the new tool can be used in combination with the firm’s Interplanetary File System (IPFS) gateway launched in September 2018: “In conjunction with the IPFS gateway, this allows hosting websites and …

Four experts discussed the future blockchain in financial services, agreeing on the importance of specialization in a panel on crypto derivatives at Synchronise Europe in London today, June 18. Some of the original conceptualisation of blockchain needs to be available publically to be materially modified to suit the needs of diverse financial services, said Kelly Mathieson, head of enterprise solutions at Digital Asset. Mathieson argued that enterprise grade versions of blockchain technology are now viable, and that there has been a divergence from the original blockchain concept. Those versions of blockchain are needed to be changed in a way that …

Blockchain software firm Digital Asset has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Aurora to make its open-source smart contract language Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML) more interoperable. The partnership was revealed in a press release acquired by a Cointelegraph correspondent at the IMN Synchronize Europe Conference in London on June 18. The partnership will enable multi-platform DAML support for various blockchain networks, notably including Hyperledger Fabric and blockchain consortium R3’s Corda, both specifically cited in the press release. Introduced in April 2016, DAML is an expressive language designed for financial institutions and enterprises to model and execute agreements through distributed …

Major enterprise contract management service Icertis will collaborate with Microsoft to expand its blockchain-based contract solution, the company announced on June 11. By entering the collaboration, Microsoft will help Icertis to extend its Icertis Blockchain Framework, which is designed to enhance the transparency and efficiency of contractual frameworks using smart contracts technology. The Icertis Blockchain Framework offers a blockchain-powered solution to track contractual requirements and commitments, improving the quality of collaboration and accountability. The tool aims to solve various problems associated with contractual arrangements on the supply chain, including combating the use of child labor, conflict materials and tainted food …

The Google Cloud team has integrated Chainlink’s oracle middleware with its BigQuery enterprise cloud data warehouse, allowing for an on-chain and cloud-based interaction with Ethereum decentralized applications and smart contracts. The news was revealed in a development report published on June 13. As previously reported, a blockchain oracle is a system that provides the necessary external data — i.e. the variables to be evaluated — to trigger the execution of a smart contract when the original terms of the contract are met. The development post writes that Google has made public blockchain data for eight different cryptocurrencies freely and publicly …