A decentralized, open-source crypto platform based on the Ethereum protocol named Callisto Network offers users free-of-charge smart contract security audits. The company wants to support them in the battle against cyber criminals and help developers solve security issues in Ethereum codes. Blockchain audit One of the most common crypto crimes nowadays is hacking exchanges. According to the reports of crypto analytics companies Chainalysis and CipherTrace, cyber criminals generated around $1 billion in revenue in 2018. During the latest attacks, users lost 1.35 million Bitcoin (BTC) in the Mt. Gox hack and 24,000 BTC in BitFloor. The Callisto Network calls itself …

A committee of the Connecticut state legislature has proposed to authorize the use of smart contracts in commerce in the state, according to official documentation introduced on March 7. The Commerce Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly (CGA) has introduced House Bill 7310, suggesting that blockchain-powered smart contracts may be used in commerce conducted or initiated in the United States state of Connecticut. The committee elaborated that any cryptographic signature or a record secured through distributed ledger technology (DLT) should be considered to be in an electronic form and an electronic record. The CGA Commerce Committee emphasized that no smart …

United States smart contract security company Quantstamp has announced its expansion to Japan following an investment from local financial giant Nomura Holdings. The news was revealed in a press release from Quantstamp published on March 6. According to the announcement, the U.S. firm has received a “significant investment” from Nomura, which provides investment, financing and related services to individual, institutional and government customers. Venture company Digital Garage, which invests in successful internet startups across the world, reportedly also contributed to the round. Information that the corporate funding round was led by Nomura also appeared on Crunchbase on March 6. The …

The Ethereum Foundation has awarded a grant to researchers at Columbia and Yale universities for the compilation of a new smart contract programming language into the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). The development was announced in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on March 6. The beneficiary of the grant is a smart contract R&D project called DeepSea, spearheaded by Professor Ronghui Gu, an assistant professor of computer science at Columbia, in collaboration with researchers at Yale. Gu is also the co-founder of blockchain security firm CertiK, which is also one of the participants in the project that raised “several millions” …

Parity CEO Jutta Steiner has said that the new controversial Create2 Ethereum (ETH) function would have prevented the Parity multisig freeze. Steiner spoke on the subject during an interview with Fortune published on March 5. As Cointelegraph reported in November 2017, a user “accidentally killed” the Parity multisig library by activating a vulnerability to become the owner of the library, and then self-destructing it. The incident involved 587 wallets holding 513,774.16 in Ethereum, at the time equivalent to about $152 million and about $65 million today. Create2, the new function added to Ethereum with the Constantinople update that has been …

Blockchain startup Digitex Futures is ready to launch its commission-free futures exchange. The platform is planning to add traditional futures markets — including forex, metals, commodities and indexes — to crypto options in order to attract different groups of traders. One of the goals of the new startup is to fill the gap that Digitex sees in the exchange market. The company notes that regulated exchanges offer high security, together with high fees. Smaller platforms are cheaper for traders but riskier, as they are more attractive for crypto criminals. For example, in January 2019, New Zealand exchange Cryptopia was attacked, …

Estonian game developer Ether Dale is ready to implement its new system — dubbed “Side-chain 2.0” — to its multi-blockchain mobile game Glitch Goons. The company says its aim is to build a platform on which people who are not familiar with blockchain can easily create, trade and exchange non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Easy way to non-fungible tokens Glitch Goons is a player-versus-player (PvP) automatic game where cybernetic animal-humanoids battle with each other to get resources and power in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world. Now, the developer is planning to implement its own Side-chain 2.0 with new features. The new system will …

Afri Schoeden, release manager at blockchain infrastructure firm Parity Technologies, has quit all Ethereum projects after a controversial tweet that sparked outrage on social media. Schoeden spoke to blockchain media BreakerMag on Thursday, Feb. 21. In his tweet, Schoeden reportedly criticized Serenity, also known as “Ethereum 2.0” — a final upgrade for the Ethereum network that brings its mainnet over to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. The tweet, which has since been deleted, reportedly read: “Polkadot delivers what Serenity ought to be...” Polkadot is Parity’s upcoming protocol aimed at linking different blockchains. Schoedon told BreakerMag that he will “no longer …

Researchers from the Stanford University and Visa Research have developed a privacy mechanism for Ethereum (ETH) smart contracts. A paper describing the mechanism was published on Stanford University’s Applied Cryptography Group website on Feb. 20. According to the paper, the researchers created “a fully-decentralized, confidential payment mechanism” called “Zether” that is consistent with both Ethereum and other smart contract platforms. The developers reportedly developed a new smart contract — that can be executed either individually or by other smart contracts — that maintains the account balances encrypted and enables the deposit, transfer and withdrawal of funds through cryptographic proofs. The …

Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin and other core devs have dismissed allegations that a new smart contract creation feature set to be released in the forthcoming Constantinople hard fork will have negative security implications. The discussion was held during a Ethereum core developer call on Feb. 15. The feature in question is called “Create2” — designated as Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) EIP-1014 — and is intended to allow for interactions with a contract that does not yet exist on the blockchain — specifically, “addresses that do not exist yet on-chain but can be relied on to only possibly eventually contain …

Cryptocurrencies have been a headache (if not a nightmare) for the law. Ever since Ross Ulbricht launched the Silk Road online marketplace in February 2011, Bitcoin and its ilk have been disrupting the ability of authorities to police the globe, and to ensure that norms, regulations and laws are being observed. For a while, it was believed by some that smart contracts — essentially if-then instructions written into and executed by a blockchain — would do something very similar to the law itself, coming into potential conflict with the globe's legal systems and their jurisdiction over our behavior. However, in …

Smart contracts auditing firm Hosho has laid off 80 percent of its staff, citing an increased amount of automated tooling, the firm’s co-founder and president Hartej Sawhney told Cointelegraph on Feb. 1. Sawhney noted that while Hosho has laid of a significant portion of its team, it continues to be one of the leading firms in the industry of smart contract auditing and security, specifically in penetration testing. The Hosho president explained that the staff reduction was caused by a complex set of circumstances, including the downturn in the amount of initial coin offerings (ICO), which is in part due …