Colin Harper
56 posts
Gaming developers have begun integrating Bitcoin’s Lightning Network into their own games and existing titles to provide players with bitcoin payouts. The Lightning Network is a payment protocol that facilitates fast, near-feeless transactions on a network that operates with different rules than Bitcoin’s primary network. This in-game rewards economy offers everyday gamers a “stake” in the game and an opportunity to monetize their hobby, a privilege […]
Well, Dogecoin still is a meme – just a more expensive meme. And as the price rises from the depths, Dogecoin’s historically scattered development is rising with it. Take Dogecoin lead maintainer, Ross Nicoll, for example. His last commitment on Github came in October of 2019, but in the past two weeks he’s taken on a handful of new pull requests to make changes to the […]
Many of Bitcoin’s most active stakeholders have just about nailed down the activation method for Taproot, the Bitcoin software’s biggest upgrade in years. In a public meeting on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Tuesday, Bitcoin developers, miners, business professionals and enthusiasts hashed out the specifics of how to package the Taproot upgrade into an update – and how to activate it once the code has been shipped. […]
Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade is (basically) a shoe-in as Bitcoin stakeholders figure out the best way to bring it online. Digital signatures are created from the private keys that control bitcoin wallets and are required to approve transactions. Taproot addresses will use Schnorr signatures, rather than Bitcoin’s current signature algorithm, the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm, or ECDSA for short. In terms of data and processing, Schnorr […]
“Are you running the numbers?” This is what Bitcoin Core developer Andrew Chow is trying to find out in a new survey. Sponsored by a grant from MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative, Chow crafted the survey “to get answers from people who are not current users” about why they don’t run a Bitcoin Core full node, the wallet software which simultaneously keeps a record of Bitcoin’s transaction […]
When Elon Musk adds #Bitcoin to his Twitter bio, you know buying bitcoin is in vogue again. The cryptocurrency is pumping, perhaps not-too-coincidentally, as investing app Robinhood faces criticism for censoring stock and crypto trading in response to the Wall Street Bets saga. With Robinhood taking heat, Coinbase is basking in the glow. Coinbase’s popularity has climbed to its highest point since 2017, and it’s now […]
The Bitcoin community is debating the extent to which Bitcoin Core developers and maintainers should shoulder the symbolic burden of hosting its white paper, particularly when doing so could unnecessarily sap their time and finances. The question arose after the Bitcoin white paper was taken down from Bitcoincore.org, a canonical repository for the Bitcoin software and educational resources like Satoshi’s 10-page thesis, following legal threats of […]
Interest in Bitcoin “double-spending” grew after recent news that the Bitcoin network processed the same bitcoin (BTC) in two transactions – the very “double-spending” scenario Bitcoin was specifically designed to prevent. Except the double-spend didn’t happen, at least not in the traditional sense. “The bitcoin ‘double-spend’ media headline has certainly spooked investors, but it’s a misunderstanding of how the Bitcoin network operates. In this case, a […]
Originally slated for Dec. 1, 2020, Bitcoin Core version 0.21.0 is now available for download, and includes a handful of notable changes to Bitcoin’s primary software implementation. Most notably, Bitcoin now supports Tor’s latest address format, Taproot’s code is now live for testing and Bitcoin Core finally gets manual fee setting. With bitcoin’s price pumping, these new features don’t grab headlines every day, but the improvements […]
Bitcoin miners representing roughly 91% of the network’s hashpower have demonstrated support for Bitcoin’s biggest upgrade in years, Taproot. These activation methods vary the length of time required and whether or not to include a measure that would force the upgrade through full nodes with a “user activated soft fork.” Given miner support, Bitcoin developers believe the upgrade should activate without issue, regardless of the specific […]
After her website faced repeated domain name revocations, Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan has registered her website on the distributed domain names network Handshake. The pirated database of academic papers is now accessible directly through the service’s portals as well as through NextDNS, a privacy-focused, cloud-based domain name service resolver which converts IP addresses into domain names. “The DNS is like a phonebook for the internet. The […]
Square Crypto’s latest grant will fund a Bitcoin developer’s work on software that could improve how mining collectives pool hash power. Pseudonymous developer Fi3 (@piccioneLibero2 on Twitter, or “free pigeon”) will receive an undisclosed sum to work on an implementation of Stratum V2, the next iteration of a Bitcoin mining protocol software developed by Braiins, a subsidiary of the Czech mining entity Slush Pool. “Square Crypto […]
Another crypto exchange has added support for Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. U.K.-based CoinCorner debuted Lightning Network support for its users Tuesday. They can now deposit and withdraw bitcoin with the secondary network, a software stack that is built on top of Bitcoin’s core technology which facilitates cheap and fast transactions. “Lightning is the most decentralized and trustless scaling solution. We were always going to integrate Lightning but […]
In an interesting consequence of Ripple Labs’ battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a Missouri man claiming to be a Coinbase client is suing the crypto exchange for selling the XRP token. In a complaint filed in the Northern District Court of California, Thomas C. Sandoval, the St. Louis County-based plaintiff, alleges Coinbase knowingly sold XRP as an unregistered security and gained commission on […]
Square Crypto is bankrolling its 8th designer grant to focus on Bitcoin’s user experience. This marks the Square offshoot’s 20th grant in support of Bitcoin development since it launched in the summer of 2019. Portuguese software designer Patrícia Estevão is Square Crypto’s most recent grant recipient. Per her grant proposal, the UX Designer will use the funding to research Bitcoin user experience, specifically why people use […]
XRP is a digital currency which is issued and partly managed by Ripple Inc. a payment solutions company that also manages the RippleNet cross-border payment network. Ripple began selling XRP in 2012, though the company has turned its attention away from the digital currency and toward its cross-border payment network in recent years. How does Ripple work? Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, Ripple does not refer to […]
Amiti Uttarwar opened Bitcoin’s code and froze. She was no stranger to programming languages. Studying information systems at Carnegie Mellon, she spent the first few years after graduation as full-stack developer for Silicon Valley startups. She was proficient in a half-dozen coding languages and had worked for five tech companies in her nascent career. She was working for Coinbase at the time. This article is part of […]
One of Ethereum’s most popular software wallets, MyEtherWallet is joining other crypto businesses by giving users access to Ethereum 2.0 staking. Through a partnership with node-hosting service Staked, MyEtherWallet now offers its browser and mobile wallet users the option to stake ETH tokens into the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain deposit contract, a smart contract that lays the foundations for Ethereum’s revamped blockchain infrastructure. MyEtherWallet “users need […]
Yearn Finance is eyeing yet another merger with yet another food-themed DeFi project – only this time, the candidate has a larger market size than Yearn itself. Per a blog post authored by Yearn Finance creator Andre Cronje, the so-called decentralized finance protocol may fuse with SushiSwap, another automated market maker (AMM) that forked from UniSwap. In addition to combining technical features for market infrastructure, the […]
One of the crypto industry’s most popular exchanges is redoubling efforts to sweep U.S. users off its platform. As reported by Decrypt, Binance is threatening a hard deadline to herd U.S. users off its original exchange platform (not to be confused with Binance US, which is legally open to U.S. residents). Email notices sent to U.S. users give them 14 days to withdraw funds before Binance […]
The biggest update in Ethereum’s history will begin its first phase on Dec. 1. Per a tweet by ETH 2.0 Researcher Justin Drake, Ethereum 2.0’s Beacon Chain’s launch has been set for Dec. 1 at 12:00 UTC. The backbone of Ethereum 2.0, the Beacon chain is an interim blockchain that will operate alongside the current network as it begins the first of four migration phases to […]
The smart contract that will trigger the first phase of Ethereum’s most ambitious upgrade yet has nearly accrued enough funds to activate. The Ethereum 2.0 deposit contract currently holds 385,440 ($231 million) of the requisite 524,288 ETH required to activate Ethereum 2.0’s beacon chain, the central nervous system of the completely rebooted network. This represents roughly 75% of the threshold needed to activate the upgrade. The […]
Gnosis, one of Ethereum’s earliest ICOs, is spinning up a DAO that uses a novel mode of governance you’ve probably never heard of. The newly launched GnosisDAO will allow Gnosis users to vote on platform governance and development. Gnosis CEO Martin Köppelmann told CoinDesk the DAO’s voting proposals “can be really wide-reaching: product roadmap decisions, treasury management, starting new ventures, funding public goods. DAOs open up […]
Lightning Labs’ new liquidity marketplace, Lightning Pool, has seen more early-stage growth than its creators expected. And what’s more, a fair share of its volume is coming from individual Lightning users – not businesses. “It’s a big surprise! Very exciting,” Lightning Labs Business Development head Ryan Gentry told CoinDesk. “The primary users thus far have been a mix of power users and startups/businesses who are already […]
After the most recent Mac update caused major problems for one of Bitcoin’s oldest wallets, its development team has rolled out a fix. Originally raised as an issue on Github, the Big Sur update is bricking MacOS Electrum clients, a Bitcoin software wallet which is a favorite of power users because of its complex tooling and user controls. The Electrum team announced today that a new […]
Apple’s most recent update, Big Sur, makes a feature that logs device activity for offline (and online) applications practically impossible for privacy solutions to bypass. The monitoring is yet another example of Apple’s privacy-compromising design choices, despite the company’s efforts to present itself as a privacy ally. VPNs and other firewalls cannot circumvent the feature. Security researchers suggest that users who care about their digital privacy […]
The bulk of Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem went dark earlier today after a latent bug in the Ethereum code split the network’s transaction history in two. The split resulted from a code change that was surreptitiously inserted into a previous Geth update and activated today; some Ethereum node operators ignored the update, which ironically was meant to prevent the very split that occurred. The nodes that did […]
In traditional business, “key person risk” refers to when a company relies too much on one individual to succeed. Cryptocurrency businesses are prone to a very literal version of this risk when handling funds. The most infamous example may be QuadrigaCX, whose customers have been waiting nearly 3 years to recoup $115 million worth of deposits since the death of founder Gerald Cotten, the sole possessor […]
After going live last week, the deposit contract for Ethereum’s 2.0 upgrade now holds over 50k ETH – 10% of the threshold needed to activate the watershed update. This deposit contract is the cornerstone of the Ethereum 2.0 update and serves as a bridge for the migration Ethereum network away from proof-of-work (PoW) to a new technical infrastructure that supports proof-of-stake (PoS). In order to become […]
When Bitcoin SV (BSV) forked from Bitcoin Cash, its mandate to create a faster, payments-focused blockchain required gutting some of Bitcoin’s key technical features. In doing so, it gutted some of Bitcoin’s key features; now, it’s worse off for it. One of these features, the so-called pay-to-script hash (P2SH) function, allows a user to send a transaction by signing it to a “script” rather than a […]
Some $1 million in Ethereum tokens is locked in a new DeFi app after its developers made changes to the protocol’s interest rate smart contracts. DeFi lending platform PercentFinance, a fork of Compound Finance, wrote in a blog post on Nov. 4 that “that some of [its] money markets experienced an issue that can result in permanent locking of user funds.” The team froze money markets […]
With Bitcoin’s long-awaited Taproot upgrade on the horizon, the engineers at Blockstream are working on a new scheme to improve multi-signature transactions. These transactions, which require signatures from more than one private key to authorize spends, will stand to benefit from Taproot. This upgrade implements Schnorr signatures into Bitcoin’s codebase, a cryptographic signature scheme that will make creating and executing smart contracts easier on the network. […]
The code for Taproot, Bitcoin’s biggest upgrade in years, is finalized and has been packaged into a forthcoming update. Only, it’s not ready to be deployed yet because Bitcoin developers have differing opinions on the best route to activation. Taproot will enhance Bitcoin’s smart contract capabilities by implementing a new digital signature scheme, Schnorr. Implementing the upgrade requires a “soft fork” of Bitcoin’s code, and there […]
The MakerDAO community is voting on a proposal to harden the protocol’s governance structure against flash loan voting. Source link
The Lightning Network is a young protocol, and it’s going through some technical growing pains as its tech stack grows and its network expands. While most of the vulnerabilities (covered in part one of this series) are neither protocol-breaking nor easy to exploit, they’re still reminders that improvements come with trade-offs – and that security and usability are two sides of the same coin. This is […]
Bitcoin mining profitability is in the basement, seeing all-time lows in 2020. Conversely, Bitcoin’s hashrate has surged throughout 2020, propelled in part by mining farms financing new hardware to boost their operations. Bitcoin’s hashrate has taken a dip as China’s wet season comes to an end, but mining professionals predict this will only be temporary, and it has only improved profit margins so much. Bitcoin mining […]
This is the first article in our two-part series on existing vulnerabilities in Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Part one details the outstanding vulnerabilities and their risk factors. Part two will examine why these weak spots have never been exploited, what changes may be made to fix them and the developing trade-offs that come from balancing user-friendly applications and air-tight security. A running joke (or perhaps, an admission) […]
Tucked away on a quiet street in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, Room 77 had the look of your typical dive bar – until you paid attention to the details. If you did, you’d notice the grungy scene was punctuated with cypherpunk paraphernalia. One brick wall overlooking a row of booths was populated by the portraits of Ross Ulrbicht, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. Adjacent to these crypto-anarchy […]
A first-of-its kind service wants to play matchmaker between big-scale mining facilities and individual miners looking for a hosting setup. Bitcoin mining company HASHR8 just launched its Compass platform, a search engine of sorts for individual miners to shop for a hosting facility to operate their mining hardware for them. While mining farms hosting solo miners’ machines is nothing new, Compass is the first service to […]
It all started with a couple of retweets. On September 28, Andrew Cronje, the head honcho at Yearn Finance, retweeted graphic designs for a new project called Eminence, so described by Cronje as a DeFi protocol for a “gaming multiverse.” The game is allegedly a spin-off of a 2016 kickstarter trading card game called Eminence: Xander’s Tales and may incorporate non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The retweets included […]
The MakerDAO community has voted to add support for a trio of new tokens for the decentralized finance (DeFi) loans that generate DAI stablecoins. Vaults are now open for deposits of Chainlink’s LINK, Loopring’s LRC and Compound’s COMP. Community members pitched proposals to add the tokens this summer and voted for their integration via Maker’s on-chain governance platform this week. Counting this new crop of collateral […]
The first time he was SIM-swapped in 2018, Haseeb Awan took it on the chin and hoped it wouldn’t happen again. Then came the second incident. Then the third. Then the fourth. After the last swap, Awan stopped trusting his mobile provider to keep his account safe and took matters into his own hands: He started his own cell service company. It was a major pivot […]
For this year’s Blockchain Commons internship, Christopher Allen had an uncommon “problem”: too many quality applications to turn down. Instead, he expanded the program to accommodate 7 interns where he usually only accepts one. With the internship drawing to a close, the interns have just about completed their projects – but that doesn’t mean they’re done contributing to Bitcoin’s open source projects. When Christopher Allen received […]
While so-called “DeFi degens” are busy bidding up the price of food-themed tokens, on the other end of crypto’s DeFi spectrum two teams working on the most popular implementations of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network have been busy pushing out new features. This week, both Lightning Labs, which maintains the Lightning Network Daemon (LND) implementation of the Lightning Network, and Blockstream, which maintains the c-lightning implementation, updated their tech […]
“Republican_win”; “Democratic_win.” These are the parameters (and call functions) for the first smart contract escrowed bet placed on Bitcoin’s mainnet. On Sept. 8, BTCPay Server founder Nicolas Dorier and Suredbits founder Chris Stewart entered the bet on the 2020 U.S. presidential election outcome using a discrete log contract (DSL), a form of smart contract that became feasible on Bitcoin just this year, thanks to independent Bitcoin […]
Under development by the LNP/BP Standards Association, the RGB protocol entered beta in June. The second layer network promises to bring smart contracts and tokenized assets to Bitcoin with a Lightning Network-esque technical design. RGB could be used to issue tokenize securities and nonfungible tokens (NFT), and to offer a more private means of stablecoin issuance and transfer. Smart contracts and Bitcoin. These technical phenomena are […]
The SushiSwap community has voted on policy changes to the protocol to reduce the token reward schedule, introduce a lock-up period for newly minted Sushi, and introduce fee staking. But these changes can’t be made without first migrating to new smart contracts, a research firm told CoinDesk. The current MasterChef contract doesn’t permit changes to the SushiToken contract, which in turn dictates other protocol functions for […]
As traders gobble up stablecoins for yield farming, demand for MakerDAO’s dai (DAI) has sent the stablecoin’s peg skyward. The yield farming demand continues to put pressure on dai’s $1 peg, which has been under consistent stress since Black Thursday when market volatility sent dai’s price to $1.10. MakerDAO’s community is debating some tweaks to its monetary policy to restore the peg, though Maker’s creator believes […]
Wasabi Wallet users need to upgrade to the latest version if they want to continue using the CoinJoin feature to keep their Bitcoin transaction histories private. That’s because those running older iterations of the wallet can no longer use this feature to mix their coins with users who have the newest version. The Wasabi Wallet team hard-forked the wallet Thursday to address a vulnerability discovered by […]
A hypothetical man-in-the-middle attack would have allowed an attacker to hold users’ crypto for ransom on Trezor and KeepKey hardware wallets. Source link
New research from RSK/IOV’s Sergio Demian Lerner reveals that Patoshi, an early Bitcoin miner assumed by many to be Satoshi Nakamoto, mined using an algorithm that was not included in Bitcoin’s first client release. This finding finally explicates why Patoshi’s hashing patterns are so much different than other, early Bitcoin miners, but raises the question: Why did Patoshi give themselves a leg up? If we take […]
Privacy-focused Bitcoin software wallet Wasabi is getting a major protocol overhaul. The Wasabi team is working on a new protocol design, dubbed WabiSabi, in a bid to improve the user experience and privacy guarantees of the wallet’s CoinJoin transactions. The major design change would allow users to coinjoin with different values than their peers, a first for the privacy-minded technology that could lead to new (and […]
A cybersecurity firm has unearthed a monero mining script embedded in a public instance of an Amazon Web Service (AWS) virtual machine. Now the firm is raising the question: How many other community Amazon Machine Instances (AMIs) are infected with the same malware? Researchers at Mitiga revealed in a blog post Friday an AWS AMI for a Windows 2008 virtual server hosted by an unverified vendor […]
When dust settles in your home, you wipe it up. But what about when unwanted dust makes its way into your bitcoin wallet? Well, cleaning it up may not be so simple. In Bitcoin parlance, “dust” is the technical term given to trace amounts of bitcoin that are considered too small to send in a transaction because the transaction fee would exceed the amount sent. Typically, […]