UPGRADE
Ethereum Testnet Successfully Upgrades for Upcoming Shanghai Hard Fork
Ethereum's Sepolia testnet has undergone a successful upgrade simulating the upcoming Shanghai hard fork expected to take place on the mainnet in March. The upgrade, called "Shapella", allows validators to withdraw their staked Ether and rewards on the execution layer.
Crypto Firms Join Forces to Push for Stratum V2 Bitcoin Mining Upgrades
Spiral and Braiins lead efforts along with an industry working group to upgrade the current Stratum V1 protocol for miners.
Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork Upgrade Confirmed to Happen on September 22
The Vasil upgrade promises to include improvements to the Plutus programming language as well as introducing greater scalability for lower transaction fees.
Axie Infinity Transitions its P2E Gaming Platform to a New Game Mode
Online pay-to-earn (P2E) gaming platform Axie Infinity has announced the transition of its gaming mode from classical to a better-developed one dubbed Axie Infinity Origin
Coinbase Introduces Ethereum Staking for US Institutional Clients
Coinbase rolls out a new staking crypto service to its institutional clients ahead of Ethereum’s planned transition to a proof-of-stake mechanism, providing more financial options to their portfolios.
Burnt Ethereum Edges Closer to a Billion-Dollar Value
After the London Hardfork or EIP 1559 upgrade went live on August 5, the first-ever deflationary block on the Ethereum network occurred because scarcity was introduced every time Ether was burnt after being used in transactions.
Algorand Protocol Stateful Smart Contract Upgrade Targets Scalable DeFi Solutions and Dapps
Algorand is entering the decentralized finance (DeFI) ecosystem with its new highly scalable stateful smart contract capabilities.
Ethereum Hits Major Bullish Milestones in Anticipation of the ETH 2.0 Staking Upgrade
Ethereum wallets containing 32 more or more ETH, the amount needed to stake a validator node under the upcoming ETH 2.0 upgrade has hit an all-time high. The number of Ethereum network balances with 32 ETH or more has been nearing 120,000, in anticipation of the proposed ETH 2.0 update. Validating nodes will be replacing miners in the current proof-of-work system to validate transactions to maintain the Ethereum blockchain. Over the year, the number of wallets holding at least 32 ETH has risen around 15 percent, according to Nansen AI. Although the ETH 2.0 upgrade has been delayed several times, the major upgrade is expected to be deployed in July.
IOTA Network Increases its Speed by 20x Following its Relaunch a Few Months Prior
The IOTA Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on blockchain and open-source development has announced the latest version of its node software, Hornet together with the IOTA community. The IOTA community has conducted a stress test that illustrated a stable network of over 150 nodes with over 650 confirmed transactions per second (TPS). This shows an increase in transaction throughput by a factor of 20, while Hornet is able to consume 10 times less memory under normal operations compared to its previous node software.
Are Ethereum Nodes Ready for a New Hard Fork on New Year’s Day?
The Ethereum network is expected to undergo a scheduled upgrade, named Muir Glacier at block number 9,200,000, predicted to occur on New Year’s Day 2020.
Ethereum Istanbul Hard Fork Successfully Completed and Supported by Major Exchanges
Ethereum has successfully hit block number 9,069,000, where the Istanbul hard fork has been completed. Istanbul is Ethereum’s eighth hard fork overall, addressing issues such as denial-of-service attack resilience, interoperability with equihash-based proof-of-work and gas costs, which is the cost to send a transaction on the Ethereum network.